


For the Night Has Been Unkind

by CoolJellyBean25



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Depression, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Isolation, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Torture, Violence, some fucked up shit I'm warning you now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:10:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 141,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10319504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoolJellyBean25/pseuds/CoolJellyBean25
Summary: Even with the straitjacket off, Ed never feels like it's really gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I'm a lunatic from hell. If I think of anything specific I forgot to put in the tags I'll insert warnings for more bad shit up here in the notes so if there's something you'd rather avoid keep one eye on the notes above each chapter. My first time on AO3 so bear with me. 
> 
> This whole first chapter is like, more hurt than comfort, but the comfort will start soon I swear. Six months after Brotherhood, Ed's still in the military, and I handwaved Ed's automail and alchemy back into being.

 

Usually, the squeal of brakes and the lurching, grinding of the train carts was enough to wake Ed up when he arrived at a destination. Normally he'd be up like a shot, suitcase swinging and the sound of Alphonse calling after him to wait up.

Now though, he was _tired_ , and he was alone.

He wasn't sure at what point he'd drifted to sleep during the ride. The trip to Lodsenburg had taken two different trains and a long layover in some small town with no hotel, so Ed had been forced to sleep on the train station bench.

'Sleep' being the magic word there. It had been more like 'staring at the back of his eyelids, feeling the gradual chill settle into his automail ports and ache there'.

There had been a phone at that station though, so Ed had gotten to check in with Al. Ed had slipped one coin after another in, listening as his brother chattered endlessly about all the different schools he was applying to and the peach cobbler that Gracia had brought over and how soon do you think you can come back home, Brother?

“ _Soon_ ,” Ed had promised, looking at his last few coins in the palm of his hand, “ _It's just a small inspection to figure out where the profit reports are going. Probably just confusion from the change in government-- it's been like this all over the place._ ”

“ _I know,”_ Alphonse had replied, his voice sad _, “I just wish General Mustang wouldn't send_ you _of all people to go rustle up paperwork. Or at least, he could've kept you close to Central, couldn't he? It's only been six months since the Promised Day. You deserve the vacation.”_

Ed had smiled then, a bit tightly. He didn't know how to explain to Al-- who'd been in a suit of armor for the past five years and had required no food, sleep, shelter, or medical care-- that those things cost money. Ed's hospital bills had been footed by the military. Al's hospital bills got sent to Ed, and they weren't small by any stretch of the imagination.

Ed also didn't know how to explain to Al that _he'd been on the run_ for the last few months before the Promised Day. His bank account had been frozen and dissolved by Bradley's order. They were practically penniless. The only reason he'd had an apartment to bring Al back to after his release from the hospital was because Mustang had given him the money for the security deposit.

Ed ground his teeth at the thought. _That_ had chafed his pride like nothing ever before. Getting paid double for field work was serious business though, and that debt was the first that Ed paid off, even if Mustang had told him-- in that quiet, soft voice he'd taken to using with Edward anytime money came up-- that it wasn't necessary.

Mustang had really gone to bat for him over the money too. He'd filed for compensation on Ed's behalf and petitioned for the small fortune to be returned to him, but they'd been immediately buried in so much red tape, paperwork, and bureaucracy that Ed had thrown his hands up. It was easier to earn the money back than trying to navigate the deliberately confusing and conflicting military policy.

Mustang had apologized. Ed had shrugged, and privately hoped that Alphonse got every scholarship he applied for, because he couldn't afford to send him to school.

“Sir?”

Ed looked up sharply, pulling himself upright from where he'd been slumped in his seat. The train was at a total stop now, and an attendant was standing next to the seat opposite him. She looked tired and slightly harassed, like the crew had probably pestered her into being the one to fetch Ed.

“We've arrived in Lodsenburg, sir.”

“Oh,” Ed managed eloquently, then reached under the seat and pulled out his suitcase. “Sorry. I was waiting for the crowd to clear.”

The attendant smiled at him with a hint of impatience, as though she thought Ed were telling a particularly shitty joke.

“You're the only one leaving at this station, sir.”

“...Oh,” Ed said again, and the attendant left before he could say anything else. Ed shrugged, gathered his suitcase, and headed forward. A doorman was standing next to the stairs on his way out. Outside, Ed could see the train station and not much else.  
  
“Is the town nearby?”

“It's a straight shot from here,” the doorman replied, more casual than the attendant. “Not even a quarter-mile. You can't get turned around or anything either, it's all woods on either side of the path.”

“Thanks,” Ed grunted, and stepped off the train. At nearly three in the morning, the station was predictably abandoned. The only sound was a dead leaf scraping the concrete platform, hung up in an old spider web in the corner. The wind was even colder than it was back at the layover station. Ed drew his coat tighter around his throat, looking around the station.

He saw the nearby phone booth and paused.

He'd told Alphonse he'd call when he reached Lodsenburg, and Mustang had ordered him to report in the moment he got there. The northern territories were a literal hotbed of danger if the wrong coal was disturbed, and Mustang would have sent Havoc in with him as backup if they weren't completely buried in paperwork from the Ishvalan Reconstruction.

Ed considered the phone booth a moment longer before turning away.

It was freezing, and he only had a few coins left. The phone at the hotel would be free, and if he walked fast, it wasn't like Mustang or Al would know the difference. Ed tightened his coat up, swinging back to look at the train. The doorman tipped his hat at him and Ed held up a hand in a parting wave, stepping off the platform down to the road below. As he started to walk away, he heard the sound of the train whistling, wheels groaning against the tracks as it began to grind forward.

Ed looked around the road as he walked. Gravel and crushed ice crunched underneath his boots. Along the edges of the road, slushy snow was built up in muddied mounds. Footprints were everywhere-- probably people shoveling snow away from the station, Ed guessed. The path was unlit, and though Ed could still see the train station, they probably couldn't see him.

Behind him, train carts rocked and rattled as they blew through the station, deafening in the dead silence of the woods.

Ed walked faster as the train rattled on, shivering as his shoulder port-- usually the first thing to be affected by cold-- squeezed painfully in response to a cutting wind. He felt older than sixteen when he was out in the weather, and it wasn't even snowing at that second. Combined with the bone-deep tiredness, Ed couldn't wait to reach the hotel. A bed, hopefully a fireplace or at least a working radiator, maybe even a meal, because train food was the _worst_ \--

\--there was a _snap_ , and Edward froze. He tilted his head and listened, breath held for a moment as he stared out into the dark woods on either side of himself.

Nothing. As far as Ed could see, it was just dead trees and snow and darkness. Ed rolled his shoulders in a shrug. It was probably just some animal, he rationalized as he started walking again. He sort of wished Alphonse was with him-- Al would probably have gone off chasing the animal down to try and help it, and by the time they would've gotten to the hotel, they'd be soaking wet and Al would have a pet wolverine named Lucy or something.

Ed snorted at the thought, then shook his head. Al was out of the hospital, but gallivanting around the country was not an option if he was still using an inhaler and walking with a brace. He was exactly where he belonged-- safe at home, thinking about whether he wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect or maybe all three? Ed had suggested that last option. If anybody could master the three trades it was Alphonse.

Ed, warmed by this thought, was just distracted enough to not notice the first soft crunch of a footstep. When the second one fell, out of sync with his own, it was just a moment too late-- the suitcase fell from his fingers, and he brought both hands up only to get his automail arm seized upon by his stalker.

“ _Fucker,”_ Ed spat, swinging his weight to try and throw off the man's balance. The attacker seemed intent on taking Ed to the ground by pulling all his weight down on his arm, blocking Ed's ability to clap his hands by keeping the automail tugged close to his chest. For his trouble, he got a swift punch to the face with his left fist.

When the larger man tightened his grip instead of letting go, Ed reared his fist back to hit him again, swearing in the process.

Hands grabbed his free wrist and twisted it, and Ed was forced to arch his back to avoid yanking his shoulder out of socket as his wrist was pressed into the small of his back. Before he could start kicking, the icy cold metal of a gun was pressed under his jaw.

Ed froze then, becoming very still. The man hanging off his automail chuckled weakly. Ed squinted through the dark at him and could see his nose was bleeding, and the sight of it gave him some small amount of satisfaction, even as several other men came out of the forest.

“This is a lot of trouble for a mugging. Hope you like sharing my underwear between the lot of you,” Ed sniped as one of the men picked up his suitcase. The comment earned him a harsh twist of his wrist, pushing it closer to its breaking point. Two more of his assailants abruptly found his legs, and he was wrestled none-too-gently to the frozen ground.

One cheek pressed to the gravel, Ed looked from one pair of jackboots to the next, scowling as he tried to see his attackers better. The largest man was the one on his automail arm, pretty much sitting on it to keep Ed from being able to use it.

 Clearly, they had planned this. They knew about his automail, and they knew to keep his hands separated. Mustang hadn't called ahead to Lodsenburg to tell them he was sending someone to inspect, for fear they'd sweep any possible evidence of wrongdoing under the rug.

So how'd they know he was coming?

“Hey, look, if this is about the missing profit reports, I get it,” Ed called, ignoring the way the man pointedly ground the gun into his face. “There's been a lot of places with the same trouble. I'm sure we can work somethi— _mmmghh--_ ”

A thick wad of cloth was stuffed unceremoniously into his open mouth. Ed heard the stretch of duct tape and began to kick up a fuss again, thrashing uselessly under the weight of four men. A hand slammed his head into the ground, hard enough to split his lip on a rock and catch his brow. Before he could work the cloth out from behind his teeth, the duct tape was wrapped around his mouth several times, catching his hair in the process.

That annoyed him more than the blood in his mouth and dripping into his eye. Tape was such a _bitch_ to get out of his hair. He struggled again for a few moments just to be annoying, sucking in deep breaths through his nose before the weight on his chest increased.

Words were exchanged over his head as two _more_ people emerged from the trees. Ed furrowed his bleeding brow, trying to pick out what was being said before he realized that it was all in Drachman.

_Drachman_.

Fucking _perfect_.

A hand grabbed his ponytail and yanked his head back, forcing him to look up as far as possible. Ed swallowed uncomfortably, then cringed as a flashlight was flicked on and pointed directly at his face. More Drachman was spoken quickly, then one of the men that had just emerged from the woods bent down, holding an open file close to Ed's face

Seconds passed in silence. The gun clicked audibly against his face, and Ed felt his stomach tighten.

“This is him,” the man said in Amestrian, no trace of an accent. He spoke again in Drachman, probably repeating his statement as he yanked the file back and disappeared from sight. Orders were suddenly barked around Edward. The hand on his ponytail pulled his head back tighter, and Ed snarled into the wad of cloth in his mouth as more tape was wound across his eyes, blotting the world out around him. The weight on his back shifted and the man holding his wrist pulled the sleeve up, exposing his skin to the cold.

Silence again, then Ed felt the unmistakable press of a needle into skin.

All rational thought left him at this. Uncaring of the needle buried in his arm, Ed began thrashing violently, kicking his legs and screaming into the wad of cloth in his mouth. His ponytail was released as weight increased on top of him, his assailants all piling on him to hold him down as the offending syringe was emptied into his arm.

The needle was yanked out. It left behind a dull, thudding pain in his arm.

Logic told Ed that fighting would only speed up any drug in his system-- doing anything to make his heart pound harder would make it effect him faster. It was going to get him anyway, though, so Ed twisted and flailed as best he could, struggling to pull his automail arm free. If he could just get it loose, if he could draw an array fast enough into the dirt--

\--Ed's limbs started going numb and lax, and very soon it felt like he was floating outside his body.

Was it just making him go to sleep? Was it just a really painless, quick way to eliminate enemies of the Drachman state? Ed felt like he should be panicking, but the world felt really far away, and the gravel was no longer biting into his face as he lay there and--

Edward was _tired_ , and he was alone.

Ed couldn't tell how long he'd been out the next time he woke up, seeing as how he was still blindfolded by tape. He could tell that he was lying face down on something metal. He groaned-- there was still a wad of cloth in his mouth, which was bone dry. Ed tried to move his arms, but found that they were held flush to his sides by leather cuffs attached to a belt around his waist. His hands were taped into fists, preventing him from moving his fingers. Testing his legs revealed his ankles were tied together in a similar fashion.

He growled weakly into his gag, trying to turn his head. There was a throbbing pain behind his eye that he couldn't place the cause of, and his muscles felt weak and useless. He tried, to no avail, to bully himself into an upright position, but found that the surface he was lying on was _moving_.

Ed stilled, listening, before he placed the sound of tires rolling over rock and snow. He was in the back of a truck, he realized. Maybe-- maybe he could squirrel his way to the end and just fall out? There was a good chance he'd die of exposure, or get eaten by a bear, but at least he wouldn't be a _prisoner_.

Ed started squirming, ready to follow through on this dumb plan, but somebody said something in Drachman and there was suddenly a boot on his head, pinning him to the truck bed.

Oh.

He was in a carrier truck, and surrounded by the asshats that had kidnapped him in the first place.

Great.

There was some chatter again, then Ed felt his left sleeve being lifted again. Before he could talk his body into fighting, a needle had been plunged into his skin and a syringe was emptied into his arm.

As Ed became numb to the world around him again, the only thing he could think about was how pissed Mustang was going to be when he had to send rescue up into the bitter cold of fucking _Drachma_ of all places.

Leaden darkness felt like it was smothering him now, and Ed couldn't seem to gather the strength to fight. Occasionally he was jostled and awareness came back to him, but it was like looking at daylight from a bottom of a well.

At one point, he felt like he was floating, weightless and warm, before freezing cold reality came crashing back in on him and he was awake again. Waking up in a strange place would usually have brought about some sharp defensive snarls, but Ed felt like his brain was in a fog. He was still blindfolded and gagged, but he didn't need his sight to know that his clothes were gone. He was lying on his chest, cold metal pressed to his skin. The stillness of the air around him told Ed he was no longer in the truck.

Somebody touched his bare back.

Edward worked up the strength to snarl into the wad of cloth in his mouth. It sat like a rock on his tongue, which felt stiff and bone dry from no water. He felt limp and weak. Any struggle swamped him with exhaustion, leaving him sucking in harsh breaths through his nose.

Fingers ghosted along his automail port for a second. A cold sweat broke out across Ed's skin and he started shivering.  
  
There was silence, then a small _snap_ , then silence again. Edward tried growling again but it came out as little more than a muffled whimper.

A breath ghosted against his ear and Ed cringed. He felt a needle once again prick his arm. He _really_ wished they'd stop doing that.

There was the _snap_ again, and it took Ed several precious seconds to realize that someone was cutting the wires inside his automail. He rustled up the energy for one last growl before darkness swamped over him.

It felt like he was drowning this time, dark water rushing over his head and silencing out the world around him. Occasionally, he surfaced, but in a haze of confusion before going back under the water. Once he remembered seeing lights pass overhead, and it felt distinctly like he was sitting upright, yet moving at the same time. He fell back into darkness again pretty swiftly.

When he woke again, the tape over his eyes was gone, but he was still in inky blackness.

For several long, disorienting seconds Ed thought he'd been blinded for real. He blinked repeatedly, swallowing down nausea and panic and wetting his painfully dry mouth now that he was apparently free of his gag.

“--'lo?” Ed managed, and his voice fell flat in the darkness. The room he was in was small, then, Ed decided, and likely with no windows. He tried again, with a slightly stronger voice this time, and got mostly the same results. He wasn't blind; there were just no lights.

Ed rested his head back against the floor and closed his eyes. His stomach flipped and turned inside him however, and rest didn't seem to be in the books as he started gagging. Ed tried to throw his arm out.

He couldn't move his arms.

Retching, Ed rolled clumsily onto his side and threw up. Nothing really came out except liquid, although it felt like his throat was burning from the force of it. Ed couldn't remember eating anything since the layover station, and even that had just been a muffin to tide him over. He'd been planning on feasting at the hotel.

So much for that.

Done with throwing up, Ed turned his attention to the problem with his arms. They were, as far as he could tell, still attached to him. They were just stretched oddly across his chest in a strange self-hug. It took some amount of struggling for Edward to finally understand just what he'd been put in.

A straitjacket.

With a raspy growl, Ed twisted himself up onto his knees, then feeling the weight of something around his neck. Cold metal pressed into his skin, and the distinct sound of a chain rasped across concrete. He was wearing a straitjacket, and he'd been _collared_ and chained to the floor. Ed fought, trying to twist his arms inside the tightly drawn sleeves of the canvas straitjacket. He felt buckles digging into his spine, and with each jerky motion he could feel a small padlock swing from each buckle. Inside the sleeves, his arms were doubly secured by leather straps around his wrists, preventing him from moving them more than a few inches in either way. He was also not wearing anything except for a thin pair of hospital scrubs.

“Fuck, fuck--” Ed panted, thrashing so violently he overbalanced and tipped over sideways. When he tried to spread his legs to help catch himself, Ed discovered that there were shackles on his ankles, connected by a chain too short to let him properly walk. Trying to move his automail proved useless. His leg and arm were dead. “ _Fucking goddamnit--”_

Ed struggled across the floor, finding himself in the corner of the small room fairly quickly. The chain hanging from his neck coiled over his thigh. The metal was biting cold, and when Ed finally ran out of breath, he wiggled until it slid back to the floor before falling still.

Ed tried to move his fingers, but it seemed his Drachman captors had thought of everything. His hands were still taped into fists, with a large piece of foam wedged into his palms. He couldn't try digging his fingernails into his skin to draw blood.

Frustrated almost to tears, Edward crawled in an awkward crab-shuffle, exploring the perimeter of his small cell. The floor and walls were concrete, and proved to have no defining feature except for where his chain was connected in the center of the room. It was _maybe_ five by five feet, a literal closet. No windows, no lights, no obvious doors. Ed strained his ears for a few minutes and heard absolutely nothing beyond the four walls.

If Ed wasn't certain that the Gate didn't specialize in straitjackets, he would have thought he'd been tossed behind those ancient doors and forgotten.

With nothing around him to exploit or use, Ed turned his attention back to the straitjacket. His shuffling had revealed wide straps belted into the outside canvas of the jacket. They crisscrossed his body over his chest and buckled tightly around his upper arms, limiting them to the barest amount of movement. Another one was pulled tight between his legs, tugging uncomfortably when Ed tried sitting up straight. He tried hunching over to prevent this, but a line of fire was soon pulsating its way over his spine and he straightened again, choosing to ignore the discomfort from the strap.

He pulled on the chain, yanking his head back to make it slither across the floor. It was, Ed discovered quickly, a useless restraint. It didn't stop his straightening up, it didn't keep him from reaching walls or corners he shouldn't. It was exactly the size of his cell. All the collar and chain did was serve to remind him that he was the captive of some unknown Drachman asshole.

Ed tried his automail again. His fingers didn't respond at all, not that they'd be any use if they did, but Ed could still sense a pressure plate in his palm. His wrist didn't do anything at all. There was some response from his elbow, but it felt like he was trying to move it through mud. His leg was pretty much the same story. His knee bent well enough, but his ankle was completely dead, and it felt like the tension had gone out of it. Putting any weight on his leg proved to be an exercise in futility.

Ed fell onto his back and closed his eyes. Straining and struggling proved to be useless-- the straitjacket wasn't coming off by fighting. Ed heaved several deep breaths, forcing himself to think. His captors had clearly covered all their bases-- they had to have an alchemist helping them, but Ed was fairly certain that Drachma didn't have an alchemy program comparable to Amestris'.

The weight of his automail was crushing his chest. Ed slowly rolled over onto his side. Without a pillow or any kind of support, though, his shoulder caused his head to rest at a painful angle, and his neck was soon protesting against the position. Rolling onto his stomach pressed his arms against his chest and kept him from breathing properly. Back on his back caused the same problems, plus the added feeling of the buckles and padlocks digging into his spine.

One painful, miserable position after another, and Ed eventually hauled himself up, spitting curses as he leaned back against the wall. Pulling his knees up revealed another problem-- he had to piss. Ed ignored the feeling, but putting his knees up put pressure on his bladder, so he wound up laying in an awkward angle in the corner, legs stretched out in front him. The heavy chain hung uselessly down his chest, coiled like a snake between his legs.

Edward leaned his temple against the wall, staring out into the inky black darkness. He had no earthly idea where he was, or how long he'd been in the tiny cell. So far, the only idea he had was that he was just as up north as he'd been when he got off the train. The freezing chill in the walls gave him at least that much information.

Goddamn but did he have to piss though.

“ _HEY!_ ” Edward yelled, sitting up, “HEY YOU FUCKS OPEN THE DOOR! I'M GOING TO PISS ON THE GROUND IN HERE IF YOU DON'T!”

Nothing. Biting out a sigh, Edward went back to resting against the wall. With nothing else to do or think about, darker thoughts began to swirl inside him, like sharks honing in on blood in the water.

If he couldn't hear anybody outside, would they even be able to hear him?

Was there anybody outside at all? What if this was how he went out; straitjacketed, locked in some unknown room somewhere, left to die chewing on the straps that held him?

Ed stopped his racing thoughts in their tracks, not liking the claustrophobic panic that tried to claw its way up in his throat.

“I'm fine,” he said out loud, soothing the fear back before it could rise up, “What the fuck ever. I'm fine. They went through this much trouble, so they're not going to leave you in here to rot. Come on Ed, stay calm. They'll come in to get you eventually, and then you can kick somebody's fucking head in.”

Panic slightly assuaged, Ed looked out into the darkness, then closed his eyes. He'd gone to sleep in shittier situations, in worse places and with a full bladder too, so he'd do it again. If nothing changed by the time he woke up, he'd start chewing the straps.

Ed hiked up his shoulder to act as a pseudo pillow, turning his hip so he could rest his bent knee against the wall. That was alright. He could sleep like this.

Ed wasn't sure how long he slept, or if he really slept at all. It was hard to tell when the room around him was just as dark as the inside of his eyelids. His head sagged repeatedly, waking himself up with a jolt. After a while, though, he managed to sink into something halfway approaching sleep, broken dreams and thoughts still filtering through his head.

Ed woke with a final start. He blinked his gritty eyes, staring out around himself.

Still dark.  
  
He was still tightly straitjacketed and shackled, and the only thing that had changed was the urgency of his need to piss.  
  
Ed let his head fall back against the wall. At the very least, his nausea had subsided a bit. It meant he'd been asleep for at least a few hours, because now his shoulders and elbows were sore from their positions around his chest.  
  
Ed shifted his leg, and the chain hanging from his neck rasped against the concrete again. He jumped at the sound, then scowled into the darkness of the cell.  
  
Now was time for some more drastic measures, he supposed, or at least as drastic as he could manage in his bound-up state. Sliding onto his back, Ed lifted his legs-- the automail one more jerkily than normal-- and pressed them against the wall.  
  
He kicked it. The walls were as concrete as the floor, and the metal of his automail rang loudly in the small room. Ed ignored it in favor of kicking the wall repeatedly. If there was some chance that someone outside could hear him, might as well be as annoying as possible, right?  
  
“HEY!” Ed yelled, “LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! I'M STILL IN HERE! COME ON, LET ME OUT!!! _HELLLLOOOOOO!??_ ”  
  
Ed banged his feet and screamed until his throat felt hoarse from both strain and thirst. His gut was cramping from needing to use the bathroom, so eventually he rolled onto his side, straightening his legs out in an attempt to relieve the pressure.

The decision he made earlier to chew on his straps seemed like a bad one in retrospect. His mouth was completely dried out, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd had something to drink.  
  
_It was on the train_ , Ed told himself, closing his eyes and rolling back on to his side. His bare foot hurt from kicking the wall now. _It had been on the train, and it had been a glass of water with ice._  
  
Ed tried to shake the thought out of his head. How long had it been since he got off the train? Lodsenburg was at least a week's worth of travel away from Drachma, not counting in the bad weather in the mountains. They couldn't have not fed or watered him for a week. He'd feel much worse than this if that was the case, so the only conclusion Ed could draw was that he was still in Amestris somewhere. The north had so many little nooks, crannies, and boltholes that it was hard to keep track. He could be literally _anywhere_.  
  
Ed rolled to his other side. It was just as dark on that wall as it was the other. There wasn't much else to do besides sleep, Ed surmised as he tried to reach the strap across his chest with his mouth. The collar bit into his throat, choking off his breath as he did so, so he straightened back out.  
  
The boredom might kill him before starvation, Edward decided, grumbling as he hauled himself back into his corner. Moving was difficult-- Ed knew pretty intimately how much having arms effected your balance, and having both of his strapped to his chest made getting around the tiny cell a much more difficult task than it ought to have been.  
  
Resting back in the corner, Ed closed his eyes, careful to lean in such a way as to not put pressure on his bladder.  
  
Maybe his captors were counting on him losing his mind to boredom? Ed shifted in his spot, then snorted. If that was the case, they didn't count on Ed being a genius. He had shit in his head that he could go over for years, starting with his best friend in hard times-- the periodic table.  
  
“Hydrogen,” Edward began, smirking gleefully into the darkness, “Helium. Lithium, sodium, sulfur. Manganese, chromium. Iron, cobalt, beryllium, titanium...”  
  
Ed rolled through the periodic table, then did it again just for fun. When nothing had changed after that, he went through it in perfect order, grouping elements together properly. That done, Edward began piecing together a mathematical equation for a new writing code, walking through the numbers out loud. Every time he came across an inconsistency, he fixed it out loud, back tracked to correct the equation, then started over. When he eventually worked that out, Ed mentally went over an array that he'd been constructing for fun while he was at home with Al. He drew it out in his head, every circle, every symbol. He imagined painstakingly edging out every single line, double checking every single angle, admiring the vertex when it was complete.  
  
Ed did this for a while, still not sure of how much time was passing. His mouth was getting drier by the minute and a headache was starting to buzz dully in his temple. His left elbow ached from being bent constantly and being rested upon. He'd switched positions a few times in attempts to get more comfortable. Ed had found the best way was to lay on his side, slightly curled with the front of his shoulder pressed into the ground so that he had some kind of pillow for his head. His stomach was clenched with hunger, and his gut was cramping viciously with the need to urinate still.  
  
Ed was reciting a passage of Weigel-- _(“The parts of the Universe, of which the whole man is made, are three; — the World of Eternity, the Evial World, and the World of Time. The parts of Man are three, Spirit, Soul and Body; and these three parts spring and are taken from these three parts of the whole Universe.”)--_ when he saw the point of light in the corner of his eye. He turned to look at it, so sharply that he choked on what little spit he had in his mouth.  
  
The light was gone. Ed searched desperately for it, staring out into the dark and straining his eyes trying to find it. He wobbled to his knees and did a full circle of the tiny cell, but there was nothing.  
  
Nobody had somehow snuck in to click a flashlight at him for funsies. It was just his imagination fucking with him, Ed surmised, going back to his corner. He felt tired again, but he knew he hadn't been awake for long. At least he thought he hadn't been. Maybe it had been a whole day and he just couldn't tell.  
  
“It's just the dark making me feel tired,” Ed said aloud, settling his uncomfortable body into the best sleeping position he could find. He'd sleep as best he could, then he'd get back to reciting things out loud, and possibly do a bit more screaming at the walls to see if he could provoke any kind of reaction out of his captors, if they were outside his cell.  
  
Ed closed his eyes again, letting himself sink back into the same broken, unrestful sleep from earlier. Shards of half-formed thoughts and fractured dreams passed through his mind. At some point there was the even blackness of normal sleep, then it was interrupted by spots of light and murky shapes in the dark, and Ed swore he heard deep, animalistic growling from the shapes-- like some fucked up chimera prowling in a misty field.  
  
Ed dreamt he was sitting in front of the Gate wearing the straitjacket, and Alphonse was pulling the buckles tighter, chattering all the while. Al's voice faded in and out, like somebody was turning a radio dial wildly.  
  
“ _Just relax._ Y _ou'll love it, Brother. It makes you feel so much better.”_  
  
It didn't feel better. In fact, it felt like he was suffocating as Al winched each strap tighter and tighter. Ed gasped for air against it, unable to speak or protest against the treatment. His ribs were being crushed, and the straps were grinding into his skin, starting to cut into him. Ed felt warm, and looked down at the blood soaking his legs, pooling beneath him and--  
  
\--he woke up with a start. He was still in the dark, but instead of freezing now, he was warm and--  
  
Ed looked down at himself. Predictably, he couldn't see anything. However, he was exceedingly aware of the fact that he no longer had to pee, and the thin hospital scrubs he was wearing were now completely soaked.  
  
“...Fuck,” he hissed, feeling angry tears building up in the corners of his eyes. He instinctively tried to wipe them away but his arms were, as usual, pinioned tightly again his chest. “ _Fuck_!”  
  
The puddle of urine was rapidly cooling,and Ed made the decision to crawl away from it, moving to another corner. He whacked his knee on the large ring that held his chain to the floor and he swore out loud. It was like salt in the wound, he thought bitterly, finding the corner and hunkering down. His headache was worse now, and the empty, hollow pain in his stomach nearly had him dry-heaving. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth, like it was stuffed with cotton. Swallowing brought about a sharp pain in his throat.  
  
Thinking about the periodic table proved a fair bit harder this time. His scrubs dried after some time of sitting there, but the smell lingered long after. Trying to strain and fight the straitjacket just made his head hurt worse, and Ed found his only bearable option was to rest quietly on his side and try hard not to think about the miserable, aching pain in his elbow. Every time he thought about the puddle of urine in the other corner, or caught a whiff of his scrubs, he felt himself flush with shame and humiliation all over again.  
  
It wasn't his fault, Ed tried to rationalize. He couldn't conceivably hold it for days. Or one day? Ed didn't know how long it had been. Maybe he'd just been in here for a few hours and he just had no fucking self control. He hunched his shoulders and tried to ignore the creeping panic that was clawing its way up him again.  
  
What if his first suspicion had been right? What if they weren't coming back for him? Maybe this was some fucked up method of execution-- nobody really had to dirty their hands with the actual killing part of it. They just put him in a room and wait for him to inevitably expire.  
  
Maybe he needed to come to terms with the fact that this piss-soaked cell was now his coffin.  
  
Ed pressed his face against the concrete and lifted his lips in a weak snarl. The tears of anger and frustration were building in his eyes again. No. No, no, no, _no._ He'd fought too hard. He'd been through hell and back since he was ten years old, there was no fucking way he could die here.  
  
Close to his head, there was a soft _thunk_. Ed turned his head to look at the wall in confusion, blinking repeatedly as a sudden blast of cold air hit him in the face.  
  
A vent. There was a vent there. Ed staggered back up to his knees and moved to the wall. With no free hands to feel, Ed slid his face against rough concrete until he found the smooth metal edge of a grate. It felt like it was set into the wall pretty solidly, so there was no chance of him pulling it out with his teeth, but a vent meant something important.  
  
It meant that beyond it, there was a duct, and most importantly, another room. His world was suddenly no longer confined to the four walls he was currently locked in.  
  
Ed cleared his painful throat as best as he could He then waited until the air conditioner had turned off, then started shouting past the grate.  
  
“HEY!” he shouted, his voice turning into a harsh rasp if he dragged the syllables out for too long. “HEY LET ME OUT! HEY, I KNOW YOU FUCKS CAN HEAR ME OUT THERE! I'M STILL ALIVE IN HERE! HELLLLLOOOOO? I SWEAR I WON'T KICK YOUR ASSES TOO MUCH!”  
  
Ed kept this up for as long as his throat could manage, then sagged down next to the grate. He'd keep trying, he decided. He wouldn't go down quietly. He'd gather his strength for another burst, and eventually somebody would have to fucking listen.  
  
He closed his eyes but was a bit afraid to sleep, thinking about his last dream. Sleep came anyway though, in fits and spurts. Ed couldn't tell how much time passed since he had found the grate, and the air conditioner didn't turn on again to give him some way to mark hours. He napped, shouted into the grate, napped again. Sleep felt like hell and being awake was worse as his hunger increased and his throat felt like it was swelling from dehydration. Grit and crust had built up in the corner of his eyes, irritating them every time he blinked. His hair felt tangled and matted around his neck. His skin itched where the urine had dried.  
  
The light reappeared again. It was definitely part of his imagination, Ed eventually told himself, just what the dark was doing to his head. Knowing that didn't help as the points of light, shapes, and strange colors made their way across his vision in a dizzying hallucination. At some point he collapsed to the ground, too weak and exhausted to hold himself up.  
  
Everything became a blurry haze. Ed slurred out curses and the periodic table into the grate, head resting against the edge of the smooth metal just to have something besides concrete and the canvas of his straitjacket to feel.  
  
He was halfway through rasping out the periodic table for what felt like the millionth time when there was a grinding noise in the wall in front of him. Ed stared blankly into the dark in front of him at this new stimuli, uncomprehending at first until his first light since--  
  
\--well, Ed didn't know when the last time he saw it. The wall in front of him screeched on a track, sliding open as light slashed through the dark room like a sword, illuminating everything. Ed flinched back as his headache worsened, his eyes struggling to adjust to suddenly being able to see. His cell was as blank and impersonal as he imagined it was, and after squinting for few moments, Ed could see past the light.  
  
A Drachman soldier stood there. In his hands was a long rod of some sort, and he had it pointed towards the ground. Beside him was what looked like a hospital orderly, dressed in scrubs and, for whatever reason, a surgical mask. Between the two of them was a wheelchair. Ed stared at them, then the wheelchair, and his stomach turned dangerously at the sight of it. It was fitted with straps all over, meant to pin someone securely into the seat with no hope of escape.  
  
The Drachman language was harsh and loud in his ears as the soldier spoke. The orderly pushed the wheelchair into the room. Ed fell back against the wall as the soldier stepped forward, pulling a set of keys off his waist and handing them to the orderly. Ed watched, panic and no small amount of fear jumping in his throat as the orderly unlocked the shackles on his ankles first, then the chain around his neck. He left the collar where it was as he moved to wrestle Ed from the ground.  
  
Ed looked at the orderly, at the soldier, then at the wheelchair. He knew if the orderly got him on his feet, he'd wind up in the wheelchair. With what little strength he had left, Ed threw himself onto his back with a grunt and began kicking out with his legs.  
  
“No, no--” the orderly shouted, which was apparently the only Amestrian he knew because the rest of his sentence was in garbled Drachman as he wrestled with Ed, trying to avoid getting clocked with a leg. He managed to get a hold of Ed's upper body, and then the soldier was standing over Ed, and then--

\--pain exploded across Ed's entire body, originating from his foot. He screamed involuntarily as the soldier stepped back with the cattle prod in hand, and he was unceremoniously wrestled into the wheelchair. When he arched his back to try and get back out of the chair, the soldier pressed the cattle prod to his right foot again, and Ed sobbed out a curse as another shock ripped its way up his leg. His breath was gone and he couldn't catch it because his chest was locked up from the pain. Tears that he'd refused to shed earlier now poured down his cheeks from the agony, and his leg muscles felt weak and rubbery from seizing.  
  
The orderly took advantage of his stunned state, pulling the leather straps on the wheelchair across his body, pinning him into the seat. His arms were pushed even tighter against his chest. A bolt snap clicked closed on the ring on his collar and forced him to sit up perfectly straight. Leather cuffs kept his ankles tight to the wheelchair feet.  
  
Sucking in deep breaths, Ed glared through his tears at the soldier. The man in question ruffled Ed's tangled hair condescendingly, then nodded at the orderly, and they were off.  
  
The hallway was long, painted white and brightly lit, a stark contrast to the cell Ed had been in. There was nothing on the walls, no clocks or calendars, that would tell Ed how long he'd been there in this prison _._ The lights overhead were overly bright and overwhelming, making Ed flinch every time he looked up. Doors similar to his cell door lined the hall. Ed watched them go by with a sinking feeling, wondering how many more people they had trapped inside the hellish rooms.  
  
They stopped at a barred door. A windowed room was there, and inside another soldier looked at the orderly, looked at the soldier that had hit Ed with the cattle prod, then sneered at Ed. There was a loud ringing and the barred door open. Ed was pushed through and the door shut again.  
  
Clearly, there wasn't much hope escaping for as long as he had the straitjacket on.  
  
“What's going on?” Ed rasped, knowing full well he wouldn't get answered, “What do you fucks think you're going to get out of this?”  
  
Nothing. Ed searched his mind, trying to find a good insult to sling in the spur of the moment.  
  
“The lot of you must all share a fucking brain,” he snarled, “I don't think I've heard two Drachmans speaking at the same time--”  
  
The cattle prod was pressed, not to his foot, but to the back of the collar. Ed sobbed and screamed at the same time, convulsing against the straps that held him down as pain shot down his spine. He distantly heard the orderly say something vaguely chastising, but Ed was in too much agony to care, head lolling sideways. His vision had briefly turned dark at the edges and he lost track of the hallways he was being rolled down for what felt like ages. Voices sounded distant as he was wheeled into a new room, and the door was shut behind him.  
  
There was silence. Ed managed to lift his head clumsily. The new room was a shower room, he realized after a few shaky moments. There were open stalls lining the walls and a drain in the middle of the tiled floor.  
  
What caught Ed's attention was the hook hanging from a chain, just above the drain.  
  
The straps around him were suddenly loosened, along with the cuffs and the bolt snap, and Ed suddenly found himself pulled to his feet.  
  
His knees gave out from under him. His flesh leg was weak and still throbbed from being shocked, and his automail was still partially shorted out. Before he could fall and hit the floor though, the orderly grabbed him and held him upright, walking him slowly over to the chain. Ed watched it approach with trepidation, stomach clenched with fear but unable to protest or even fall to the ground for fear of being hit with the cattle prod.  
  
Ed looked over his shoulder. The soldier was trailing along behind them, said cattle prod still in hand.  
  
They got to the chain, and the orderly snapped the hook closed, not on Ed's collar, but on a loop on the back of his straitjacket. It was a part of a system of the leather straps around his chest, Ed realized, like some kind of body harness to help keep him under control. It chafed at him, made him grit his teeth, but he could do nothing about it as the orderly released him to hang uselessly there in the center of the room.  
  
Both soldier and orderly seized an ankle and, with little ceremony, locked them in shackles embedded in the floor. The shackles were obviously spaced with somebody larger in mind, because his legs were spread too uncomfortably to hold his weight-- even if he had the strength to _try_.  
  
There was silence for several long minutes, his current caretakers out of his sight. Ed heard the rush of water, then the squeal of a metal handle being turned. A second passed in silence, then he was hit with a shockingly cold spray of water, so sudden that he yelled in surprise. He threw his head back and roared as his automail ports, in spite of the lack of electricity flowing to his limbs, seized up from the chill. He struggled, but the shackles around his ankles went taut and prevented his escape. The spraying water, presumably from a hose he couldn't see behind him, was targeted around his legs and his crotch, forcefully cleaning the urine mess he had made.

Unable to escape Edward forced himself still, taking the biting cold as well as he could. After what felt like forever he heard a spigot wheel squealing as it was turned, then the water finally stopped. He hung limply in his restraints until a bucket of water was overturned on his head.  
  
“Fuck— _what--_ ” Ed sputtered, shaking as the orderly dropped the bucket, “ _What the fuck_ \--”

The orderly suddenly grabbed Ed's hair, which had turned into a tangled, matted mess during Ed's tenure inside the cell. Fingers attempted to card through the tangles, then the orderly sighed and pulled a pair of scissors from his pocket.

Ed's heart dropped.

“No,” he snarled desperately, yanking his head away. The orderly's hand gathered the hair at the base of his neck with little care of Ed's struggles. With a couple of quick snips, Ed felt the scissors shear through his hair.  
  
Ed stopped. The orderly tossed the loose mess of hair to the ground at his feet, and it swirled uselessly in the water, collecting at the lip of the drain. The shorn ends of his hair tickled his ears and chin, hanging loose around his face now. The back of his neck felt bare and vulnerable as the orderly poured shampoo onto his head and scrubbed his remaining hair. More water was poured over him to wash it out, then both the orderly and the soldier left the shower room.

Ed hung limply in the restraints, staring at the tangled handful of hair that was left lying on the tiles at his feet. In his long and storied career in getting the shit kicked out of him, nobody had ever touched his hair. Ed wasn't vain by any stretch of the imagination, but his hair had been-- not important, but it meant something to him. An identifier. It was, aside from the automail and red coat, how people knew him. Like a banner.  
  
And in a matter of seconds, it was taken from him, left on the floor like it had never meant anything.

Ed was left to drip dry in the shower room. There were no windows here either, nothing to let him know how long he was left there. As the leather on the straitjacket dried, it tightened around him, leaving Ed nearly breathless as he hung from the hook. The canvas dragged at his skin even more than before.

After what felt like hours of just staring at tiles, the door opened again, and Ed heard boot steps clicking across the tiles. He looked up as several Drachman soldiers and one man in plain clothes came into the shower room. Ed blinked several times before recognizing the man as the one who who had identified him out near the train station when he was ambushed.

“I'd like to apologize for your accommodations, Major Elric,” the man said with a sneer, and Ed had thought he'd never meet a man more instantly punchable than Kimblee. He'd been proven wrong. “Your arrival in the north was kept so quiet that we didn't have time to pad your cell. I promise it's being taken care of as we speak.”

“Great,” Ed growled, “I was about to lodge a fucking complaint with your manager.”

The man chuckled, then slipped his hands into his pockets and gave Ed a long once over.  
  
“You are quite a catch,” he said, eyes roving up Ed's legs and up the straitjacket, gaze lingering at the collar. “For Drachma I mean. The 'Hero of the People' himself. Every scientist in Drachma is clamoring to get into this facility to observe you.”

Ed... couldn't think of anything smart to say to that. He swallowed, trying to get some spit into his dry mouth.  
  
“What the fuck is going on?” he finally rasped, cutting to the quick. “What are you talking about?”

“No idea?” the man asked, tilting his head. “I guess you and that bastard Mustang have been so nose deep rebuilding that pathetic Ishvalan wasteland none of you have noticed the rumblings in the military. What proper State Alchemist would advocate for their department to be defunded and turned into a charity program?”  
  
“Maybe the ones who signed on for ' _be thou for the people_ '?”

“If that makes you feel better,” the man replied with a shrug, “In any case, I'm Muric Banner... formerly the Perception Alchemist before my defection. It's a pleasure to meet you, Major Elric.”

“Can't say the same,” Edward replied sourly. Banner just chuckled again.  
  
“I understand you're quite upset, but you shouldn't be,” Banner said, “After all, you're a scientist, and now you're going to be a part of scientific history in the making. This facility was built specifically to hold alchemists like yourself for study. Drachman commanders have been trying to build their own State Alchemy program for a while now, and with all the confusion Amestris has been through lately, it's been easy enough to lure State and civilian alchemists around to bring them here. You're the best prize we could possibly have caught though.”

“Sounds awesome, I'll make sure to pat myself on the back when I get this fucking thing off me,” Edward replied, more out of frustration than anything else. He'd heard enough sinister speeches in his life, but this was the first he was fairly certain he couldn't get out of listening to.

Banner, for his part, didn't seem too fazed by Ed's attitude.

“That straitjacket does look pretty uncomfortable,” he nodded, reaching out and tugging on the strap around Ed's chest. “It's one of the few things we've found that can universally hold any alchemist-- though with you we had to take some extra precautions. Like I said, you're quite the prize. The ability to transmute without a circle is pretty damn interesting to the Drachman military. If they could figure out your technique, they could bypass all the 'magic circles' and 'witchcraft' it takes to learn alchemy.”

Banner leaned forward and smirked.

“The Drachmans are pretty impatient,” he explained in a mock whisper, and Ed supposed that was pretty good evidence that none of the soldiers around them actually spoke Amestrian. “And they're still pretty superstitious about it. Your ability means they don't actually have to do all the years of learning it takes to use alchemy. They've got a perfect soldier in mind, with no limits, and you're the key to that.”

Ed almost said it-- almost said that it was impossible. He almost wanted to tell him that years of study was needed no matter what, and that the only way to get the ability to do alchemy without arrays meant sacrificing something but--

\--but keeping himself useful was key to not being killed here. Ed swallowed his protests, glaring at Banner. If he was important, he would be kept alive for a while longer.

“You'll be kept comfortable from here on out, although I do have a suggestion if you want the same freedoms as my own,” Banner continued, abruptly reaching up and sliding his fingers through Ed's ragged hair. “Cooperating is the best policy. If you share your techniques willingly and swear yourself over to the great Drachman state, you'll find yourself resting comfortably in the palace of the czar himself. Not even the great Fuhrer Bradley-- may he rest in peace-- could pay as much as he can.”

His hand came to rest on Ed's chin, holding it so that Ed was forced to look at him. Ed's skin crawled at the touch.

“Or you can stay here. These are fine accommodations by themselves-- you'll be fed, cleaned and looked after well enough since you'll be unable to do so yourself. Your room is being made comfortable as we speak, and you'll have the finest medical care afforded to you by the Drachman State. You won't be allowed to go anywhere, of course, and I can't promise that all the procedures you'll have will be entirely... necessary to your health.”

He ran his thumb over Ed's lips. Acid seared in Ed's guts over the touch, like it was poison leeching into his skin and eating him from the inside out.

“Well, Major Elric? Are you going to be a lab rat, or are you going to Drachma with me?”  
  
Ed reared his head back, pulling his chin out of Banner's grasp, and _bit_. He sunk his teeth into the flesh between the man's thumb and forefinger, clamping down as hard as he could as Banner cried out. Pain exploded across Ed's thigh from a cattle prod but he only bit down harder. The taste of blood coated his tongue- the first liquid he'd had in days.

Ed snarled and shook his head, teeth tearing into flesh and _ripping_ , and a cattle prod was pressed into his thigh again. His muscles clenched and spasmed from the shock and he screamed, but didn't release his grip on Banner's hand. It wasn't until the butt of a gun connected with his face hard enough to stun him and re-open the cut on his lip did he let go.

Banner staggered back, holding his hand and gasping at the sight of the wrecked injury. Ed spat out a large chunk of flesh and a mouthful of blood. Some of it dribbled down his chin and neck, but there wasn't much he could do to wipe it away.

“You--” Banner gasped, looking down at his hand, then back up at the soldiers. He snapped something in Drachman and one of the men stepped out of Ed's field of vision.

“You might wanna get that looked at,” Ed called out to Banner as the man started heading for the door, “I haven't had my shots in a while, you fuck-- _mmph--_ ”

The soldier Banner had spoken to had come up behind Ed. With quick hands a strange system of leather straps was shoved over Ed's head. A thick leather panel was pulled tightly across his mouth and another strap pulled his jaw shut, effectively muzzling him as the soldier buckled it into place. A hood was yanked over Ed's head, blotting out the room around him.

More Drachman was shouted around him, and there was the sound of footsteps again. The door slammed shut, but Ed could tell that he wasn't alone. The soldier that had gagged him was still standing beside him.

Silence reigned for several long minutes. After a little while, Ed made a querying noise.

An electric shock screamed it's way up Ed's body, whiting his thoughts out and tearing through his nervous system. His thigh burned and Ed screeched into the gag. Another shock hit him and he struggled in his restraints, flapping his arms wildly inside the sleeves of the straitjacket. He swore a muffled curse, screaming as he twisted and flailed, trying desperately to escape. Every sound he made brought about another electric shock from the prod, until Ed locked his jaw resolutely in place and forced himself to be silent and be still. His muscles burned and twitched and it was like he was no longer in control of his body. If he'd had something to drink over the last few days, Ed was certain he would've wet himself again. His thighs burned in the various places that the soldier had pushed the prod into his skin and the hood was stuffy and hot, making the sweat on his brow itch. His heart felt like it was going to burst from pounding so hard.

The door opened finally. Ed looked up, trying to see through the weave in the fabric of the hood. There was the clack of wheels across tiles, then silence as the new person stopped in front of him. Ed listened to the sound of someone shuffling with equipment before someone spoke in Drachman.

The hood was yanked back. Ed sucked in a deep breath of cool air through his nose, eyes re-adjusting to the light again as he looked at the sight in front of him. Another orderly was there—wearing similar scrubs to the last one-- and he was holding a clear plastic mask in hand. At his side was a tank with a complicated tubing and valve system. Ed narrowed his eyes at it for several seconds before sinking realization hit him-- Banner had said something about medical procedures, and--

\--the orderly slipped the mask over Ed's face, making sure it was sealed over his nose and strapped mouth. Ed struggled violently in place, uncaring of the looming proximity of the cattle prod as he screeched and screamed uselessly into his gag. The orderly paid him little mind as he fiddled with the valve, and Ed heard a small hiss as it was turned on.

Ed sucked in another breath and held it. This didn't really faze the orderly, and the man just stood with crossed arms, just waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Nearly a full minute ticked by in silence before Ed, vision darkening and throat straining, was forced to release the held breath and pant for air. Getting some, Ed tried holding his breath again but could barely get past fifteen seconds the second round. The orderly and the soldier stood by, watching Edward's desperate attempts at staying conscious without a word, saying nothing to Ed's pleading whimpers as he started sagging more and more on the chain that held him up.

The last thing Ed remembered clearly was seeing another orderly wheel a gurney into the shower room. Everything after that quickly became a smear. He was vaguely aware at one point that he was looking at lights passing overhead. After a while of darkness it felt like there were hands pressing all over him, peeling back layers, and then it was dark again, black water closing over his head.

Ed submerged some time later laying on an operating table. Bright lights flooded his vision so bright he cringed back, but found that he couldn't move. A few seconds of struggle revealed that there was a strap across his forehead, holding his head flush to the metal table. His arms were--

\--he wasn't in the straitjacket. Rationale came a little quicker at this thought, and Ed bullied his muscles into some form of cooperation as he twitched and struggled. He was no longer in the straitjacket, but he was strapped down to the operating table, arms held down beside him inside a series of leather straps. The anesthetic mask was still sealed over his mouth and nose, and Ed worked his mouth and tried to speak and--  
  
\--his throat burned. Ed tried to swallow but couldn't, and with tears building in his eyes Ed realized he'd been intubated and prepped for surgery. Helplessness descended over him as he worked his lips, trying not to gag with the tube inside his throat. The hiss of a ventilator to his right punctuated his attempts to breathe on his own, almost like it was mocking him.

The harsh light was blotted out, and Ed had to squint, blinking against the change. Banner's face came into view a second later, the man's lips twisted into a smirk. He had a thin white scar, Ed noted with a bleary sort of confusion, and it dragged from the corner of his mouth to his edge of his nose.

Banner put a hand on Ed's cheek. His fingers were bandaged up tightly with gauze, and Ed felt a faint curl of satisfaction at the sight. It didn't last long, turning to rock-like dread that sat heavily in his guts at Banner's next words.  
  
“I thought I'd come to see you before I left,” Banner said, ugly smirk still pulling the scar on his face into a strange shape, “You're about to undergo some pretty strenuous operations, so I thought a familiar face before you go under would be a welcome sight. They're not going to do anything too serious of course, just cut you open and see if an alchemist's organs are any different compared to a non-alchemist. You know they've got a theory that the appendix might not be as vestigial as most people believe?”

Ed wished he could speak, regretted biting him earlier if only for the chance to bite him _now_. As if sensing his thoughts, Banner patted his cheek mockingly.

“Don't look so upset,” he said consolingly, “You're a scientist, and you get to contribute to a whole country's collective scientific knowledge. You're a boon to Drachman progress! I'm sure you'll go down in the footnotes of some future student's lab text, as...”

He leaned back for a minute, reading something outside of Ed's field of view. Ed heard a valve turning somewhere off to his right, but didn't have time to examine it as Banner loomed back over him.  
  
“...Subject 31,” he continued, “That's your name from now on, by the way.”

Ed choked on a snarl that never emerged. In response, Banner ran his fingers along the edge of the plastic mask.

“You're going to have a very long, long time to think about how our earlier conversation could have gone, 31,” Banner said quietly, “I'd like to welcome you now to what the rest of your life is going to be like from here on out.”

Banner stepped out of Ed's view, letting the lights blind him again.

Ed squinted, and wished more than ever for the tube to be out of his throat so that he could start screaming. Surgeons wearing hospital masks were standing over his bare, strapped down body. Metal trays with surgical tools, needles, scalpels, and nightmarish instruments sat on either side of the operating table. Gathered around were various other people wearing scrubs and masks, some holding notebooks and one of them holding a camera, as if to document the procedure. Ed watched with horror as one of the nurses inserted a needle into a tube that was run into his hand.

“That's a paralytic, by the way,” he heard Banner say from somewhere near where Ed supposed the door was, “You won't be able to move here soon. The anesthesia's set to keep you kind of out of it, but they don't want to use too much. Too much risk of death, you see? With any luck, you'll be able to watch progress in the making!”

Someone spoke, and the door shut with a resounding, final _bang._

In direct contrast to earlier, when he'd held his breath to try and escape being knocked out, Ed desperately wished he could go unconscious as his muscles slowly went lax. Try as he might, he couldn't even wiggle his toes. Ed could only lay there helpless as one of the surgeons slipped his eyelids shut and placed medical tape over them to prevent him from opening them, as if he could manage any control over his muscles at all.

Drachman was spoke over him. It wobbled in and out, Ed barely able to filter it in over the strange buzzing in his ears as the anesthetic took effect.

After a few minutes, Ed felt a small line of pressure at his collarbone. It dragged over his skin towards the center of his chest, and it took several moments of incomprehension before Ed realized that the pressure was the blade of a scalpel cutting into his skin. The surgeons were peeling him open like some kind of fucked-up fruit.

Ed hadn't screamed during automail surgery, had bit his lip and snarled his way through injury after hospital visit after another injury throughout the years.

Right at that second though, Ed had never wanted to be able to scream more in his life.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So an awful lot more hurt and no comfort in this chapter either. I wanted this chapter to end in Ed's rescue, but as I approached 20,000 words I realized that I was going to have to cut it up somewhere. BUT this means that Chapter 3 is halfway done and ought to be be put out pretty quickly in comparison to how long this took. I'm also a really slow writer and I have no beta writer to go over my bullshit so you'll have to bear with me (I'm so sorry).
> 
> There is some torture and death in this chapter beyond the medical insanity so if that's bad for you, you might want to steer clear.

“ _No, there wasn't anything here._ ”

Roy sighed and sat back in his chair, tapping his desk with his pen. After a moment, he scratched the word “Dussendale” off the list of places he had written down in front of him.

“Did you happen to rustle up what _was_ going on?” he asked quietly, trying not to let his disappointment seep into his voice. It churned inside him, coiled up and writhing like a snake though, leaving despair in its wake. “As I understand, the disturbance up there was fairly significant.”

“ _Human trafficking_ ,” Alphonse responded. His voice crackled with the static of a terrible connection. Dussendale was pretty far from Central, nestled close to the Drachman border. “ _I was able to work with the police here-- the not completely corrupt ones, I mean-- and got this operation shut down. There's a lot of channels here though and a lot of the police enjoy the... um, benefits from trafficking, so it might be best to follow up_.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Roy said, reaching up and rubbing his forehead. “Was there any chance he was... is there any evidence at all?”

There were several long moments of silence.

“ _I don't think so_ ,” Al said quietly, “... _Nothing really.._. resonates _here. I guess? I won't discount it-- there's a chance Brother could have been sold like that. He's-- I don't think he's ever realized how startling he is and I don't think he's ever noticed the looks from people he got. I feel like sometimes-- even when he was twelve and people looked at him-- that if there wasn't a seven foot tall suit of armor behind him at all times, you might have had more trouble on your hands than what you did, General.”_

Roy opted not to mention how much trouble it really had caused. Rumors in the military were ugly things, and Roy had endeavored at the time to keep twelve-year-old Edward ignorant to them. There had been the—incredibly untrue-- suggestion that Edward had gotten into the military not on merit but on how many generals he had sucked off. This had caused some of the less than stellar characters to come out of the woodwork, looking to see if those rumors were true, if they could use and victimize Edward the way the rumors claimed one could.

Roy had been careful to weed these people out, or keep Edward as far away from them as possible. Every time General Fosch had rolled by to do inspections, Roy had made sure that Ed was on the other end of the country. The man's history around children was ugly-- and because of how wealthy his family was, largely ignored. It was, sickeningly enough, treated like some kind of inside joke.

As far as he knew, as far as his knowledge extended, nobody had ever acted on those rumors though-- or at least nobody had had the chance. Alphonse went everywhere with Edward and, as Alphonse stated, a massive suit of armor covered in spikes was an extremely effective deterrent against people looking for easy prey.

“ _But I don't get the feeling Brother was here, and there's no evidence that points to it_ ,” Alphonse was still talking, “ _They kept track of their merchandise, so to speak, and Brother's not listed anywhere. And I don't think Brother could be so easily kept._ ”

Roy appreciated that Alphonse talked about Ed in present tense, like he was still alive. Hearing the old and unforgivably stuffy generals in Central offer their condolences for his missing subordinate made him want to burn headquarters down around their ears. Edward wasn't dead. Edward _couldn't_ be dead. It was an impossibility, as sure as the sun rose in the east, as sure as Roy could see the world around him with working eyes.

“Did you hear any rumors or leads on your end?” he asked, resting his chin in his hand, “I have a few more I've rustled up if you'd like to trade.”

They began exchanging names and places, exchanging incidents and disturbances that sounded even vaguely Ed-like. The ones closer to the north, anywhere near Lodsenburg, were written with stars next to their names, indicating their priority. Alphonse talked easily, outlining his next plan of action as Roy nodded along. He rather wished Edward had been this considerate when searching for the stone, but he suspected that Al's non-attachment to the military and lack of official funds might have had something to do with it. Roy paid for him out of pocket, funding his hotel stays and meals and train tickets-- anything to keep the young man from signing up for a silver watch. Biting the hand that literally fed you was probably not the best idea, so Alphonse kept the property damage to a minimum, or at least quiet.

At the very least Roy hadn't had to bail him out of jail.

“ _I'm probably going back to Lodsenburg,_ ” Alphonse said, breaking into Roy's thoughts. “ _I'm going to look around again._ ”

Roy tapped his pen on his paper, ignoring the droplets of ink falling from the nib.

“We did a full sweep of that area, Alphonse. Twice. There's just... not a lot of evidence there.”

The only thing they had found of Edward had been his suitcase, overturned in a snow drift. His clothes-- including the ones he had been _wearing_ \-- had been scattered across the ground, one pair of trousers hung up in a nearby bush. Roy had found exactly 520 cenz in the pocket and had promptly put it back. A small case of toiletries had been found in a puddle of slush. His journal and pocket watch were missing entirely.

The only found item that hadn't belonged to him was a roll of duct tape, hung casually on a broken tree branch and forgotten. The sight of it sat like like rot in Roy's mind, eating away at him as he considered the implications.

“ _I know what we found,_ ” Alphonse replied quietly, “ _I just... I'm going to have another look. I know it's been six months and the likelihood of me finding anything is pretty nonexistent, especially considering the weather, but... I was... I was really upset the first time. Maybe there's something-- maybe I missed something? Maybe something will get an idea in my head. That's how Brother works off things, I mean. He lets ideas just... spark_.”

“Maybe,” Roy said doubtfully, “... I just don't want you to lose time. I'll take a look through these leads you gave me and double check them, make sure they're legitimate. Report in when you get to Lodsenburg?”

Roy winced as he said it. That had been literally the last thing he had said to Edward-- an order to report in as soon as he reached Lodsenburg. And Ed had huffed a sarcastic laugh, flipped a sarcastic half-salute, and sauntered out of the office with a “fine, fine bastard. I”ll call you!” over his shoulder.

And that had been the last time Roy and his men had seen him.

Roy should have sent him with back up. Roy should have checked ahead. Roy should have been _paying attention_ , he should've _known_ \--

Sick guilt clogged up his throat, and he had to swallow several times, forcing himself to focus on Al to avoid being actually sick.

“ _I will, General_ ,” a pause, then, “ _You take care._ ”

“You as well. Please, be careful out there.” Roy said, and the line went dead a few seconds later. Quietly, he hung up and got to his feet, then slowly headed over to the outer office, coffee mug in hand. His men looked up at him as he walked in. Nobody said anything, just waited, because they all knew that it had been Alphonse on the phone. They were all waiting for news too, and Roy--

\--Roy could give them nothing. He looked over at Hawkeye. She sat at her desk, brown eyes calm and placid as he held up the papers in his hand. He handed them over when she stood and came to fetch them.

“Can you look through these leads Alphonse found and make sure nothing's bullshit in them?” he asked, and everyone's eyes turned away. Their faces were all varying between disappointment, despair, and defeat. More leads only meant one thing-- Edward hadn't been found yet.

“Of course, sir,” Hawkeye said quietly. She flipped through the papers, giving them a narrow look, “I'll call around and see about some of these. I'm sure Colonel Armstrong would be happy to help as well.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Roy replied, lifting his coffee mug and sipping at the bitter sludge Breda had brought him earlier. Over the rim of the mug, Roy caught sight of the only stranger in the room.

He narrowed his eyes and lowered the mug.

“Second Lieutenant Focke,” he said coolly, and said lieutenant gave Roy a look like a small animal caught in front of a snarling wolf. “What, may I ask, are you doing?”

“Ah, sir--”

“Didn't I send you out for pens?” he asked, keeping his voice like oiled silk. “I seem to remember requesting twenty-five boxes of pens. This is an especially busy office and we badly need our supplies for our workload, especially since we're _missing one of our staff,_ if you'll recall.”

“Sir, the supply office ah--” Focke swallowed, “They said no. I asked for the pens and they told me to go away. Sir. General Mustang, sir.”

“Is the supply office the only source of pens in the entire country?” Roy asked in a dangerous purr. Focke's face drained of color. “I seem to recall a stationary shop on 42nd Street. It's right on the corner.”

“Sir, that's five blocks away--”

“I'm sure Major Elric would do it,” Breda started in, using Ed's rank on purpose, “He was always good for things like that, especially for a little kid. Hell, he even got lunch for us and never bitched about it.”

Ed bitched. Ed whined, bitched, and complained, but somehow never forgot that Breda liked extra cheese on his sub sandwiches and Fuery hated olives, even through all the pissing and moaning he did about being an office gofer.

Focke looked from Breda to Mustang, looked to Hawkeye for help. She stared back stonily, obviously not about to side against her superior officer.

“Sir, I don't-- I don't have a voucher for the stationary shop--”

Roy raised an eyebrow, giving Focke a look like he thought the man was being deliberately slow.

“I'm sure,” he drawled, “if you make sure the paperwork _makes it to my desk_ , I can fill out the reimbursement forms for you.”

Finding no support from anyone, Focke slunk out of the office to make his trek to the stationary shop. Once his footsteps had faded down the hall, Roy slid his gaze back to his men.

“When he gets back,” he said, half-turning to go back into his own office, “Make sure to ask him why he didn't get any red pens. And then send him out for red pens.”

There was some quiet snickering behind him as he headed back into his office and went to his desk. As he sat down, the sound of Hawkeye's sharp, precise footsteps and the door shutting with a firm _click_ made him look up.

“Putting this much pressure on Focke is eventually going to make him file a workplace harassment report against you,” she said quietly, “I'm honestly shocked he didn't when you transferred him from North City to this office.”

“He won't,” Roy replied easily, “He knows he should have been court-martialed, and if this had happened under Bradley's reign, he could have been executed. The only thing protecting him right now is his family name, so he's lucky to have just suffered a three-rank drop and a salary cut. Who puts a case of four missing State Alchemists on 'the backburner' and doesn't remember it until three more have disappeared?”

“Someone who's been flooded with paperwork from the Ishvalan Reconstruction, like everybody in the entire military has been?” Hawkeye suggested, setting the files that she had brought into the room on his desk, along with a reimbursement form. “I'm not excusing him. It was a gross error in judgment regarding the importance of that case, and its cost us more than I think he realizes. I'm just asking you to tread carefully. The Fockes haven't really spoken up in defense of him yet, but its possible they might if he's pushed hard enough. You've got a lot of clout now but I hope you don't lose it-- or lose focus on finding Edward-- because you've spent so much time taking your vengeance out on Focke's hide.”

Roy managed to hide his wince. Hawkeye knew him just a little too well. Her point was needle sharp, pricking him in exactly the right spot to draw the most blood. She knew his weakness for getting sidetracked on finding someone besides himself to lay blame on.

If he'd only sent Edward with some _backup_. If he'd only double checked, maybe he would have found that there were open missing persons cases in the area he had sent Ed to, that someone was targeting State Alchemists specifically. He would never have sent him up there if he'd known, if Focke had done his goddamn paperwork and had it distributed properly.

There had just been _so much_ to do regarding the rebuilding of the Ishvalan homeland. They'd been swamped in it at the time, practically buried in the paperwork. Roy had looked at the assignment regarding Lodsenburg's missing profit reports, tossed it at Ed, and wished him good luck without a second thought.

Roy sighed, ran his hands through his hair, then opened up his next file.

They'd find Edward. They had to.

 

* * *

 

Ed woke up.

Again.

He wished he hadn't. He'd felt tired before, had felt so dragged down and wrecked some days that he'd wanted little more than to pull the covers over his head and ignore the world.

Now though, Ed wished he was dead, or at least asleep again to escape the nightmare that had become his life.

He shifted carefully, feeling the tug of leather straps holding him to the hospital bed. He couldn't move more than an inch in any direction, and it was pointless to even try. Low grade paralytic kept him sluggish and slow, kept him from even gagging on the tube in his throat.

Ed tried to look down. It was hard, but he was able to catch a glimpse of his chest. The surgical incisions were knitted together again, forming a y-shaped scar across his front.

They'd tug the remaining stitches out today, Ed theorized, staring up at the ceiling tiles. He'd memorized them-- there were twelve total in the room, but if he counted the quarter pieces that made up the corners, there were actually thirteen. One tile had a crack with twenty-six separate forks. Ed had followed it with his eyes one day when he was particularly bored.

The boredom was almost as bad as the restraints, both chemical and physical; it was almost as bad as the saline drip in his arm. It was almost as bad as the number that had been branded into his shoulder at some point-- he could just see the curved edge of the three in the number '31' on his shoulder. The boredom didn't quite reach the level of the ventilator though. Ed had guessed, after one particularly hard surgery that he had wanted to scream his way through, that they left the ventilator in just to keep him quiet.

The feeling of suffocation had terrorized him in the beginning, but he'd gotten accustomed to it as the weeks had passed.

The boredom, Ed decided as he tried to scrunch up his face to deal with the itch below his eye, was definitely nowhere near as bad as the force feedings. Twice a day an orderly would come in and 'feed' him by shoving a tube through his nose so hard it felt like the cartilage would break. The whole process was painful and took nearly twenty minutes each time, and Ed desperately wanted to tell them that he'd eat willingly if they'd only take the tube out of his throat.

Ed tried to move his knee and flinched at the stinging between his legs.

The boredom was also nowhere near as bad as the catheter either. They'd done it almost immediately after his first surgery and it had remained. While strapped to the bed they left it free to drain into a bag. Once his surgical incisions had healed and they could safely straitjacket him again, they always clamped it off before putting him in his cell, leaving him at the mercy of the orderlies and the hope that they would always come in on time to let him use the bathroom.

The burning shame of having zero control over his body ate at him, little by little, leaving Ed sick to his very core.

The door opened to Edward's right. Ed listened, waiting. Drachman voices argued beyond the threshold before the door swung shut again. Around him, an orderly shuffled about, gathering equipment that Ed couldn't see.

There had been a lot of arguing as of late, Ed thought as he turned his attention to the ceiling tiles again. Obviously he couldn't tell what was being said, but the tones had indicated to him that something was up. There was definitely a disagreement over him, though what it was about Ed had no idea.

Maybe they wanted to kill him and give his body a more thorough examination, Ed wondered morbidly. Alive, they could only look. Dead, they could cut him up to their heart's content.

Next to him, the orderly set a small rack of vials on the metal tray by the bed. Ed tried not to look at him. He'd made eye contact a few times after the first surgery and in response, they'd blindfolded him. He had nearly lost his mind-- Ed would much rather look at the same dozen and one ceiling tiles for weeks at a time than be blind as well as helpless to the world around him.

Ed felt the dull sensation of a needle piercing his arm. He glanced over briefly to confirm his suspicion before looking back at the tiles. Blood was being drawn.

Ed had developed a strange system of telling how much time had passed between surgeries. It wasn't accurate to hours, but it was effective in knowing when he was going back to the cell and when he was going to leave it for another surgery-- and it was something he was good at so there was that small comfort.

He'd count.

One intubation, one surgery. One stitching. Two force-feedings a day. Two changes of his catheter bag every day. Two total blood draws-- six vials a piece. One removal of stitches. One extubation. One drugging, then he'd wake up in his wheelchair, wearing his straitjacket and collar again as he was pushed to his cell. Once a day he was fed a bowl of mush and given a bathroom break. The day before a surgery, food and water was skipped entirely. One drugging, and Ed would wake up strapped to the operating table.

Adding everything up, Ed worked out that there were two weeks between his surgery and being put back into the cell, then another two weeks of cell time before being back on the table. He'd been proud of his system at first, up until his sixth surgery, when he realized that meant he'd been held prisoner for half a year and nobody had come for him.

This realization brought about the wish that he'd never figured out how to tell time.

Another orderly entered. Ed heard the sound of more arguing before the door swung shut again. The voices were getting heated, Ed noted dully. The new orderly joined the first at his side and gave Ed's surgical incision a critical look. Tools were produced several minutes later and the orderly got to work picking leftover stitching out of Ed's newest scar.

Six vials were filled with blood. Ed watched as the needle was removed and a ball of cotton was pressed tightly to the puncture area and taped down. He blinked sluggishly. They always drew the second round of blood from him on the last day of 'bed rest'. It drained him, made him tired and slightly woozy, and the drug cocktail they knocked him out with so they could straitjacket him safely always hit him like a brick wall after.

The six vials were capped and whisked away by the first orderly. Ed wondered vaguely what sorts of tests they ran on his blood. It wasn't different from any other person's blood, he knew. There was nothing biologically different about him.

He wondered if that was what the arguing was about. No results could make people unhappy, and Ed, even with a language barrier, could see the divide between the people that worked in the facility. It was split down the middle between what was obviously Drachman military and the doctors that worked there.

Ed knew that divide pretty well, considering. Scientists wanted thorough research and proper testing to get results and make sure nothing was damaged. Invariably, military wanted results as quickly as possible, regardless of what they destroyed in the process.

Ed wasn't really sure which one he'd rather have. As degrading as it was, his basic needs were being cared for by the doctors. He wasn't in any pain beyond humiliation and discomfort. If the military got their way, he had no doubt he'd be interrogated for alchemic knowledge and what little intel he might have. Ed had seen enough to know that interrogations turned to torture pretty quickly when things weren't going in the right direction for the party in power.

The door opened again, and two more of his faithful attendants appeared. The arguing had stopped. Ed laid quietly in his restraints as the last of the stitches were pulled free of his healed incisions. He heard the sound of canvas rustling and wheels on tile-- his straitjacket and wheelchair were waiting on him now, and his suspicions from earlier were confirmed when his bed was shifted, and then was ratcheted up into a sitting position.

Ed watched, numbly, as a needle was pressed into the thin tube that was taped to his arm. A clear liquid was plunged in, and a few minutes later Ed could feel the toes on his right foot again, and twitch them. Like he'd done many times before, Ed instinctively tried to swallow and gagged on the tube instead as the new drug countered the paralytic in his system.

The closest two orderlies began to fiddle with the ventilator tube. It felt like he was drowning as they untaped it from his face and began to tug a bit. One orderly had a small hose in hand, suctioning up the mucus that was rising in his throat as the tube was slid out. He retched, gagged, then began twisting back in a panic as his airway was cut off for a few seconds. It felt like he was puking as the orderlies finished extubating him, setting the tube off to the side as his mouth was suctioned dry of the secretions that had built up in his throat.

Ed struggled to breathe at first, then heaved a hard-won gasp. He sucked in another breath, fighting to make his lungs work after nearly two weeks on the ventilator. His third surgery he hadn't been able to start breathing on his own. It had felt like his chest was locked up, like it was impossible to do something that had been automatic since the day of his birth. They had intubated him again, while he was wide awake, and it wasn't an experience Ed wanted to suffer through again.

As he sucked in air, the orderly placed an anesthetic mask over his mouth and nose and Ed succumbed to it quickly and quietly. He'd screamed, his first few times, had twisted and fought in the straps. The orderlies never did anything about it, never really reacted. They didn't bother even trying to calm him. They didn't have to. All they did was step back and watch. There were always soldiers nearby, waiting with cattle prods and the hated leather muzzle and a hood.

They were always ready to administer their own brand of discipline, and Ed had learned fairly quickly that submission was the better option.

Edward woke up to find himself in the wheelchair, his straitjacket secure on his body. His head had listed to the side, unable to fall forward because of the bolt snap that kept his collar locked to the wheelchair. Wincing, Ed straightened his neck and looked around slowly. When he swallowed he coughed, throat raw and painful from the ventilator tube.

He was being wheeled down the prison hallway, as Ed had come to know it. Cell doors lined both sides of the hall. Ed was quiet, remembering distantly when Banner had told him that they'd captured other State Alchemists. How many did they have in here besides himself?

Beside each door was a clipboard with information, but they walked by too fast for Edward to study them. Ed was always disquieted by the sight of the other cell doors, looming as they passed by. It was hard to imagine a bunch of people, all locked up in the same place, knowing the other people existed but never seeing them. Everybody lived inside their own hellish, isolated bubble.

They reached his cell. The door stood open, revealing the blank white expanse inside. It was the same cell he had started in, only during his first surgery they had taken the time to put in padding, top to bottom, and install some of the brightest fucking lights Ed had ever seen. Even with his eyes closed, they shone through his eyelids, making him attempt to smother himself face down on the padded floor to escape them.

He wasn't sure if he preferred the pitch black of his first few nights in the cell, unable to see anything and hallucinating in the dark, or if he would rather the brilliance of the floodlights overhead, causing migraines and not letting him sleep.

The wheelchair straps were tugged away, and the bolt snap on his collar undone. With the padding came the problem of securing Edward, keeping him from running at the cell door whenever it opened. The orderlies had solved it rather quickly, unfortunately. Instead of chaining him to a ring on the floor, they attached the chain from his collar down to the shackles on his ankles, shortening it so that he couldn't stand straight or take a step. Ed's range of motion was limited to a wriggling crawl across his cell floor.

Chain secured, the two orderlies that had accompanied him grabbed Ed under his trapped arms and helped to drag him into the room. Ed didn't struggle, letting them pull him, then lay him on his side in the center of his tiny cell. He didn't look as the door screeched shut behind him, leaving him alone for the next twenty-four hours.

It was only until he was sure the orderlies were gone did he slowly drag himself into the corner of the cell, huddling up on himself for what little comfort he could glean from it. Ed tightened his arms around himself, tucking his knees up tight.

Ed tried to remember what it felt like to hug Al, when he had gotten him back from the Gate. He had been slim, and warm, bare skin pressed against his own. Ed had reveled in it at the time, and now he wondered if he should have hugged Al even more, taken him in as much as possible, seeing as how those last few months were likely the last time he'd ever see his brother again. He was probably in school now, he supposed, making friends. Maybe he'd gone to Xing to meet up with Mei and Ling again.

Ed hoped Alphonse was, at least, happy. He could say with a good amount of certainty now that the most miserable part of this experience was the sheer loneliness of it. He was always bound. Nobody had spoken directly to him since Banner. Nobody touched him unless it was with latex gloves, a scalpel, or a cattle prod. He was left alone in more ways than one now.

In his lowest points, he wondered if this was his punishment for what he'd done to Al, some fucked kind of equivalent exchange. He had no control over his body, and he was left unable to touch or feel, no way to take comfort in another human being's presence. It would be a fitting analogue to Alphonse's armor.

Ed buried his head in his knees, huddled up as tightly as he could, and tried to go back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Alphonse stood in the Lodsenburg station, looking around with a careful, calm gaze. Lodsenburg was rather like Youswell-- a small mining town with few visitors. He and his small party had been the only people to get off the train, in fact, and said train had not stayed long. It rattled by now, filling the small station and nearby woodland with noise. Alphonse waited for it to finish blowing past before starting a slow inspection of the station.

It was quiet. Everything was calm. Alphonse had made a point of coming in at night, to make sure that he saw what his brother had seen. The station was lit up, but the path ahead was not, cast into gloomy shadow.

“That's where he was attacked,” Al said aloud, looking back at Darius and Heinkel. The two looming men looked out across the darkness. Their expressions were that of matched suspicion, but neither of them raised an alert to anything.

Al looked around the station again. His eyes lit upon the phone booth.

Why wouldn't his brother have called? He'd always called, had spent as much time talking to Al over the phone as possible when he was out on the field. Al looked around, trying to see if there was anything that might have impeded Ed's way. There didn't appear to be anything, and Alphonse couldn't remember anything the first time he'd been out here. Maybe the phone had been out of order at the time? Maybe they were wrong, thinking Ed had been kidnapped out on the path? Maybe he'd been up here on the platform? Maybe--

\--A cold breeze pushed against Alphonse, making him shiver and tug his coat closer to him.

He paused.

There had been snow on the ground, when Ed had gone missing. The air would have been colder and chillier then, the wind harsher. Al tried to imagine what that might have felt like pushing against a set of automail ports, squeezing and pinching at his skin.

“He was cold,” Alphonse said softly, turning away from the phone booth. “It was too cold then, to stay out here. There's a hotel in town, he probably thought to just call from there.”

“Hotel would've been free too,” Darius grunted, arms folded over his massive chest, “...If you say the change he had on him was for something else, then he was damn near broke. His watch would've gotten him a room and a meal but you can't do that at a phone booth.”

“That's right,” Alphonse agreed faintly, brow furrowing. At the time, his brother's sudden frugality had been strange. Alphonse hadn't really understood it then, because Ed had never minded spending military money. It wasn't until Edward had been missing for a month and Al had gone to take rent out of the bank account, and found it nearly barren, that he learned.

Mustang told him what had happened to Ed's money.

Ed hadn't said a word to him about it-- had quietly paid for the apartment and Al's medical bills each month and scraped the rest of the bills and grocery money from what was left over. The thought left a sour taste on his tongue, and if Ed was around, Al would have strangled him.

As far as the military was concerned right now, Edward was MIA, not AWOL, and he was still being paid properly. Alphonse had discussed an idea with Mustang and had then gotten rid of the apartment, moving all their stuff into Mustang's spare bedroom. It had saved a ton of money every month, and all of Al's hospital bills and medications were paid off in full by the general himself, who charged Al only the sum of the bill and none of the building interest the hospital was demanding.

Ed had likely been tearing his hair out, watching as he paid the hospital and saw the bill grow instead of shrink. They hadn't exactly had the time to learn about finances growing up, and what little formal education they had never covered it. Aside from the initial loan that Mustang had given Ed-- which had been paid back almost immediately-- Ed had never gone to anyone for help.

Al's brow furrowed. His brother was so stubborn! And stupidly proud! He could've asked for help-- that whole office had basically adopted them; every single one of them would've been happy to sit down with him and work him through the stupid money situation.

Al shook his head, trying to whisk his anger away. Slowly, they were building Ed's fortune back up, bit by bit, so that he would have something better to come home to. They'd buy a house, Al decided firmly. They'd put down real roots, and make it so Ed could quit the military. He could go to school too, if he wanted. He wouldn't have to travel around and put himself in harm's way to make sure Al had a roof over his head.

They just had to find him.

Al headed over to the phone booth. He dropped in a few cenz and turned the rotary. The phone rang twice, then--

“ _Mustang_.”

“I made it to Lodsenburg,” Alphonse said, listening to the crackle of static that seemed to come standard with northern phone lines. “You asked me to call you.”

Ordered, more like, but Al wasn't going to put too fine of a point on things.

“ _I'm glad you did. Are you calling from the platform or from the hotel?_ ”

“You noticed that too?” Alphonse asked, “The platform.”

“ _I noticed the phone at the station at the time, yes, but I didn't think about the oddity of it then_ ,” Roy said. His voice was bleary, as though he'd fallen asleep next to his phone. “ _It wasn't until later did I take it into consideration, but I suppose you might have found the reason why he didn't use the station phone?_ ”

“He was cold and broke,” Alphonse replied, “The hotel phone would've been free. My guess is that he was also pretty tired. Brother sleeps easily but it doesn't mean he sleeps well.”

“ _Good observations_ ,” Roy murmured, “ _Have you seen to the... have you looked at where he was taken?_ ”

“Not yet.”

“ _Be careful, please_ ,” Roy replied after a moment's beat, “ _...Do you have Darius and Heinkel with you? It wouldn't do for you to be hunting for your brother and you go missing as well._ ”

“They're with me,” Alphonse turned back to smile at his entourage. Darius grunted in response and Heinkel managed something that might have been a smile if one was so lenient to count it. Alphonse was. “And I don't think I'd be in any danger besides. I'm not a famous State Alchemist.”

The silence that followed this statement was long enough to make Al pause.

“General?”

“ _Some of the leads you drummed up have come back around,_ ” Roy said quietly, “ _Civilian reports are starting to come in of missing civilian alchemists. Same area, same MO. Gone without a trace, no belongings taken with them. I'm asking you to be very careful. You might slip by under the radar for a while, seeing as how most of the general public thinks you wear a giant suit of armor, but word might start getting around. Be very careful of what you tell people while you're up there.”_

That was worrisome. Alphonse chewed his bottom lip, looking around him a little more carefully. The woods, which had seemed empty before, now seemed much more menacing in the dark.

“How many?”

“ _So far? Seven State Alchemists, four civilian,_ ” Roy said, being straight with him, “ _...It's hard to assess civilians though. State Alchemists can be tracked officially. Civilians might not be missing; they may have just left on their own. Or there might be more missing than we realize. There are plenty of people who isolate themselves to dedicate time to their craft. Nobody might realize they're even gone_.”

“Right,” Alphonse said quietly, straightening up when he saw the dial tick on the phone base. “Thank you for the heads up. I'll call again when we make it to the hotel, but we might be a little while if I'm going to do a proper look around.”

“ _'I can wait_ ,” Roy replied quietly, “ _Tell me if you find anything_?”

“I will,” Alphonse promised, and the two said their goodbyes and hung up their respective phones. Al stepped down from the phone booth and looked back out to the woods.

“Anything new?” Heinkel asked, looking over at Al over the tops of his spectacles. “You look worried.”

“Apparently it's not just State Alchemists going missing,” Alphonse replied idly, stepping down off the platform. Gravel crunched beneath his feet. “Some civilian alchemists have come up missing too.”

“Guess it's a good thing you hired us then, huh?” Darius grunted as he followed close behind Al.

“I didn't hire you to protect me, I asked you to help me find Brother,” Alphonse said, keeping his tone innocent, “I don't recall a contract being made, or any money being exchanged. In fact, you seemed fairly eager to help.”

“Don't get mouthy,” Heinkel warned, laying one of his large hands on Al's thin shoulder and tugging him back, “Hold on to your sweater vest and wait a minute. Let us walk ahead.”

Al huffed at the jab and crossed his arms, but let Heinkel and Darius walk in front of him. The three carefully made their way down the path, Alphonse looking behind him every so often to watch as the train station slipped from sight. He could see the lights from the distance, but they didn't penetrate the inky darkness of the woods around them.

“There was a lantern at the station,” Darius pointed out, and Al swung back around to look at him.

“We didn't find it out here with Brother's things, and I doubt he would have taken it-- or even noticed it-- anyways,” he said quietly, “He's not exactly afraid of the dark.”

He stopped in the path. In front of him the two chimera stopped as well, turning to look at him.

“This is where we think he was attacked,” Alphonse explained at their querying looks. “There were signs of a struggle at the time. Disturbed gravel, some blood, things like that. A lot of boot prints in the mud too.”

He nodded towards a spot off the path.

“We found his suitcase out there, and all his clothing.”

Heinkel raised his head, angling it as though listening to something. Alphonse held his breath.

“There's nothing out here now,” the man declared in a low voice, “Not even deer or anything. What were you hoping to find out here in the dark?”

“I'm not sure,” Al replied, a bit frustrated as he looked around himself. “...I'd hoped maybe seeing what Brother was seeing that night would help me figure things out, maybe at least work out how the attack went down. I'm trying to understand why he didn't even put up a fight.”

“You said he didn't have a lantern?” Heinkel asked, looking around the path. “He would've seen someone coming at him from the side, light or no light, and he would've been able to fight pretty quickly. This embankment here would have slowed anybody down.”

“So, from the station?” Alphonse asked, turning back to look. He started to take a step back in that direction, but Darius beat him to it. The large man walked a little ways back down the path, following the embankment until the forest floor became level with the gravel. He examined the ground for a few seconds.

“There's prints here, but it's been too long to know,” Darius called, “It's not too far off though. Someone could have been waiting in the woods from down this way and come up behind him. If you're trained well enough, you can be pretty damn quiet on your feet.”

“That's implying somebody professional,” Alphonse pointed out, then hesitated. “Thinking about it, I guess so. State Alchemists aren't an easy fight unless you just target the research-oriented ones. And Brother definitely isn't just that.”

“He's a fighter,” Heinkel confirmed gruffly, looking down at their feet. “You said this is where he was hit?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Al took a step out of the way as Heinkel began removing his jacket. The chimera transformed, massive lion's mane pouring out over his shirt and his face elongating into a snout. Long canines were revealed as he peeled back black lips, nose scrunching up as he sniffed deeply in the air.

“I smell something strange,” he declared, the low growl of a lion rolling around his voice. He huffed out a breath before sniffing again. “It's chemical-- like medicine. Here.”

He pointed at the spot where Ed had likely been ambushed. Alphonse examined the gravel and dirt carefully. He put his suitcase down and bent to sift through the rocks until his fingers were cold. He found nothing though. Above him, Heinkel made a faint growling noise and began to prowl. The shape of his hulking body was a little frightening in the dark, but Alphonse followed him with no hesitation as they moved closer to where Darius was.

“I hate that smell,” Heinkel grunted suddenly, “Would know it anywhere. It's like a hospital, or a laboratory.”

Heinkel and Darius would know about that sort of thing, Alphonse supposed. He picked his way across the mud of the forest floor, following behind Heinkel. Darius took up the rear, a large, looming presence in the dark.

“There,” Heinkel said suddenly, pointing at the ground. “I can see it. Can you?”

“No, I'm afraid I left my night vision on the train,” Alphonse deadpanned, stepping forward to avoid the swift cuff to the head that Darius aimed at him. He crouched down, squinting through the dark and reaching blindly through brush and dirt. “What is it?”

A pause.

“...A needle.”

Alphonse yanked his hand back. Overhead, Heinkel snorted and bent over him, carefully picking the needle out of the dirt with clawed fingers. He handed it over, applicator first. Alphonse could just barely see the glass body of the syringe, crusted with dirt, glinting ominously in the moonlight.

“Thought you said you guys did a sweep?” Darius asked, and Al sighed.

“Yeah, but nobody on Mustang's staff has the senses of an apex predator-- although Captain Hawkeye is cutting it pretty close,” he pointed out, undoing his tie and carefully wrapping it around the needle before tucking into his jacket pocket. “This is small enough it was probably buried in the snow that was on the ground at the time.”

He paused, then straightened up. He watched as Heinkel's dark shape melted back into that of a human.

“Let's go on to the hotel,” Al decided. “I can take a better look at this there, and figure out if it's got anything to do with Brother. If we're finding stuff this small, it might be better to be out in daylight.”

There were matching grunts of agreement, and the three were on their way.

The weight of the needle in his pocket was small, but it felt like lead to Alphonse, weighing on his thoughts. Maybe it was something? It'd be new evidence, something else to think about besides the roll of duct tape they'd found and the droplets of blood on the gravel.

Lodsenburg was certainly not far. Alphonse felt some bitterness well up in him at the sight of the small town, just some small distance down the road. Ed had been _so close_ to finding some safety and comfort; he'd been so close to help. The lights were all dim except for the hotel, which was lit up with a warm yellow light in the darkness.

Inside, they purchased the use of two rooms for the night. When asked, the tired-looking hostess behind the counter pointed down the hall to where the phone hung on the wall, a phone book sitting next to it on a shelf. Ignoring the phone book and setting his suitcase down at his feet, Alphonse stuck his finger in the rotary and turned out what was fast becoming a very familiar number. The phone rang several times in his ear as he watched Heinkel and Darius head up to their room together.

“ _Mustang._ ”

“It's me again,” Alphonse said quietly, aware of the hostess still moving around in the lobby. “I wasn't as long as I thought I would be. Combined with the woods, it's very hard to see anything in the dark.”

“ _So you didn't find anything?_ ” Roy's voice was that of thinly veiled disappointment.

“No, I found... something,” Al glanced over his shoulder. The woman that had greeted them at the door was busy going through the logbook now, but Al didn't want to discount a possible eavesdropper. She hadn't seemed like a professional kidnapper, but one could never be too careful. “I'll tell you later what it is-- if it turns out to be something. I'm going to--”

He nearly said he'd make an array to work it out, but managed to swallow that down.

“-- I'm going to look it over, see if it's anything real important. Six months is a long time though and it might not be anything.”

“ _Right,_ ” Roy said, not acknowledging Al's lack of specifics. “ _Are you going back out later_?”

“In the daylight, yes,” Alphonse replied, “It's occurred to me now that there's no snow on the ground here. It should be a lovely day for a picnic.”

“ _Indeed. Keep me updated, and keep your bodyguards with you._ ”

Al sighed.

“They're not my bodyguards, and I'll call you at the station later,” he said, “Get some sleep, General.”

“ _That goes for you as well. No use running yourself into the ground so soon after getting your body back. When your brother finds out about your activities, he's going to murder me as it is. If you remain in good health he might leave me handsome enough for an open casket_.”

Alphonse snorted.

“I'll keep that in mind, thank you,” he promised, and said his goodbyes before hanging up. He really hoped he wasn't keeping Mustang up at night-- the man had enough to worry about what with other generals harassing him constantly. Alphonse quietly mounted the nearby stairs and found his room across from Heinkel and Darius. He could hear the two men quietly talking, but he didn't stop to listen to their bedroom activities as he headed in.

The room was sparse and small, but comfortable. A small desk sat next to the bed, a small lamp illuminating the room. Alphonse made sure the door was locked securely behind him and dropped his suitcase on the bed. He crossed over to the window and shut the curtains firmly, hoping to block out any light.

Going back to the bed, Al took his coat off and turned it upside down, letting the needle slide out of the pocket. He carefully unwound his tie from it, then took the needle over to the desk and the lamp.

The barrel of the syringe was empty, the plunger pushed all the way to the bottom. Al could see flakes of something dried against the plunger though, so after dismantling the needle and setting it aside, he carefully slid the syringe apart. He tapped the flakes out onto the table and set the separated pieces of syringe over with the needle.

Al considered the flakes for several long minutes, pressing his hands together over his mouth as he considered what array he'd need.

After a few minutes, he pressed his fingers to the table.

* * *

 

The cell door opened.

Ed didn't react at first. Generally speaking, there wasn't much point. The orderlies would just manhandle him around regardless of whether he cared or not.

Logic, usually a snapping, instant thing for Ed, seeped in like a slow trickle. He blinked slowly at the cushioned wall in front of him. The orderlies weren't due again that day. They'd already set down his bowl of mush and watched him eat like a dog from it, and they'd already gone through the humiliation of shoving a bedpan beneath him and removing the clamp on his catheter, then putting it back on and wiping Ed's legs for him as he fought not to be sick from sheer embarrassment.

This was a break in routine.

Ed slowly rolled over to look at the door. It wasn't the usual scrub-wearing orderlies that greeted him, but two soldiers.

He swallowed.

One soldier, now that Ed's attention was on them, stepped into the cell. He walked carefully across the padding with his cattle prod held out threateningly. Reaching where Edward was lying on the floor, he held the prod close to Ed's leg and said something in Drachman.

“I don't speak your la--” Ed was cut off when the man immediately pressed the prod to his thigh, and he broke into a howling scream, thrashing as best he could with the chain leading from his neck to his feet. He clamped his mouth shut after a few seconds, forcing himself to lay still as he heaved pained gasps through his nose. He watched the soldier with wide eyes, watched as he jerked the prod in a “get up” sort of gesture.

That was new. The orderlies didn't want him standing at all. Ed struggled and lurched, trying to catch his balance what with his arms pinioned tightly around his chest. The soldiers waited, cattle prod hanging close to Ed the whole time. Finally, he had managed to stagger to his feet. Ed looked at the soldier and the Drachman gestured towards the door. Looking, Ed could see his wheelchair waiting for him.

At least that was familiar.

Struggling, because the shackles on his ankles didn't allow for much of a walk and his automail was still half-dead, Ed shuffled out of the cell, keeping the soldier and the hated cattle prod in the corner of his vision. Once he stepped off the padding and onto concrete, the other soldier grabbed him around the elbow and shoved him down into the wheelchair. The chains were removed, the chair straps were buckled around him, and his collar was snapped into place.

The wheelchair was turned to face down the hall. Ed stared down the white hall, full of doors, then started as a hood was yanked over his head. Everything was blotted out around him and panic welled up inside him. He wanted to speak, but quashed it down now that he couldn't see the cattle prod.

Ed was wheeled off in silence. They didn't take the turns familiar to him, bypassing them entirely in favor of heading straight. They went over a bump and Ed heard a gate close behind him. A second passed before there was a lurch, and Ed realized they were in a lift.

They were in a lift, and they were going down. Ed swallowed thickly, listening as he heard the rush of air indicating that they were passing open floors. When they stopped, he knew they were three floors down from his cell.

Had he been in the top of a building? Or was he now underground? This lack of knowledge was disorienting, and he didn't notice the first few turns he'd taken until it was too late. He usually tried to keep track, to try and maintain some layout of the building in his head. If any hope for escape came to him, Ed wanted a basic idea of how to get around.

He was wheeled over another bump, and a door closed behind him with a solid _wumpth._ Ed was pushed forward until his knees slid underneath a table, and the hood was yanked from his head.

_Fuck_ the light was bright. Ed cringed away from the overhead that hung over the table, squinting through the brilliant light. The rest of the room was left in darkness, except for the man that sat across from him. He was older, with grey hair and mustache, and his Drachman uniform had a few more color bars than most of the soldiers Edward had seen. In his mouth was a cigar, and the room filled with the sickly sweet smell of it.

On the table was equipment that looked a little foreign to Ed. After some inspection though, he recognized the small box in front of him as a recording device. The man in front of him tapped some papers together, set them aside, then looked at Ed.

There were laugh lines around his dark eyes, Ed noted. He didn't look sadistic-- he looked more like somebody who bounced his grandchildren on his knee and gave flowers to his wife everyday. He looked like he could've been a neighbor of his in Resembool.

“Major Edward Elric?”

Ed started. He stared. The man stared back, then nodded at Ed.

“You may speak.”

Ed stared some more. He hadn't heard any Amestrian since Banner had spoken with him. After a few moments, he swallowed again, trying to gather his scrambled thoughts.

“Yes?” he rasped. The man nodded again, but not at him. Before Ed could react, before he could expect it, the soldier standing behind him pressed the cattle prod to the collar. He wailed out loud, arching his back and straining against the restraints that kept him pinned to the wheelchair. His heart felt like it was trying to break a hole through his rib cage and his spine felt like it was on fire. Gasping, he turned accusing eyes on the man across from him, who was still sitting calmly as though nothing had happened.

“You-- you said--”

“When you speak, you will do so with respect,” the man said, his voice weirdly warm in spite of what he had just allowed to happen. His accent was thick, but his Amestrian was good and understandable. “You will end your sentences with 'sir'. Is your name Major Edward Elric?"

Ed hadn't even called Mustang 'sir'.

But Mustang had never tied him up and electrocuted him over and over, so there was that.

Ed swallowed twice, getting his gasping breaths under control. The man watched him patiently.

“Yes...sir.”

“Good. Are you the Fullmetal Alchemist?”

They already knew this. They already _knew_ this. Ed wanted to get angry, wanted to snap this thought out loud, but the threat of the cattle prod loomed in his mind.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Did you trespass on Drachman territory?”

Ed blinked, thrown. He sifted through his head for a second, trying to gather up his thoughts. It was hard to focus after so long staring at padded walls and ceiling tiles.

“No, sir.”

The man looked at his papers, frowning. After a moment, he nodded to the soldier again. Ed's eyes flew wide and he tried to twist, tried to escape the confines of the wheelchair. It did no good though, and Ed found himself screaming again. His back muscles contracted and spasms went through his legs. Even his teeth felt painful to click together.

“What-- _what_ \--”

“This says you were picked up trespassing in southern Drachma,” the man said idly, “I don't appreciate being lied to, Major.”

Ed shook his head as best he could.

“N-no--” he gasped, “No, sir, I wasn't in Drachma. I was in Amestris-- I was taken from Lodsenburg. Sir.”

The man looked at the papers again.

“Any area of land from the Black Mountains and northward is considered Drachman territory,” the man said, and Ed gave him an open-mouthed stare, “Regardless of where current political lines are drawn. Your country has simply claimed our lands illicitly and renamed them.”

The man leaned back in his seat.

“Did you trespass on Drachman territory?”

Ed knew he was looking for an affirmative, knew he was going to be hit with the cattle prod until he did. He refused to lie though-- he wouldn't give in to _this._ The recording equipment in front of him clicked softly with every rotation of the cylinder inside.

“No, sir.”

The shock was instantaneous this time, no nod necessary. Ed screamed again and thrashed, pulling at the straps that held him down to the chair. It felt like he was expending enough energy to tear straight out of the cuffs that bound his ankles to the wheelchair feet, but they held strong. Inside of their duct tape prisons, his hands clenched tightly around the foam wedged into his palms.

When he had fallen still once again, the man cleared his throat.

“Did you trespass on Drachman territory?”

“...No, sir.”

This was repeated, over and over, until all Ed could hear was the slamming of his heartbeat in his ears. His tongue felt numb and his head had sagged to the side. His spine _hurt_ , and his head was pounding, tense with a headache. He didn't wait for the question anymore, just repeating 'no, sir' over and over. Drool dribbled out of the corner of his mouth as he spoke.

The man finally held up a finger, holding off the soldier with the prod. He waited until Ed finally trailed off before reaching out and clicking off the recorder.

“Major Elric, your resilience is astounding,” he said quietly, “But I cannot imagine you are willing to do this every single day. And this _will_ happen, every single day, until you admit to your crimes against both your country and mine. You will admit to trespassing upon Drachman territory in an attempt to defect from your military, and you will admit to your willingness to assist Drachma with its need for an alchemy program. When we are done, you will be moved further into Drachma, and you will be unable to enter Amestris without being executed for treason. When we are done, your only choice is cooperation with Drachma. Are we clear, Major Elric?”

Ed swallowed, once, twice. He tasted blood. As some point he'd bit his lip to hold back the screams. He lifted his head to try and look the man in the eyes. His vision was blurred.  
  
If he was going to fuck himself, might as well do it good and proper.

“Guess you didn't find anything good inside my body?” he rasped, grinning in spite of himself. “Blood tests come back negative for anything?”

The man frowned, his tranquil expression distorted with something like annoyance for the first time since the interrogation started. He looked over at the soldier behind Ed and nodded.

The cattle prod was pressed to his collar, and Ed blacked out.

When he woke back up he was lying in his cell again, chains reattached and the door shut firmly behind him. His body felt like it was on fire, and he broke out into a cold sweat inside his straitjacket. Bullying his twitching muscles into something resembling crawling, Ed managed to drag himself into the corner.

Babbling his-- admittedly broad-- expanse of knowledge into the void wasn't helping anymore. He needed a real conversation, and not one that contained torture.

“Hey, Al,” he whispered into the silence of the cell. He kept his eyes closed against the searing brightness of the lights overhead, picturing his brother in his mind. “You remember that array we were working on? I've had a few more ideas for that, see? I think we should start looking at that Xingese alkahestry you're so damn good at for some inspiration...”

“...Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. Listen...”

 

* * *

 

“Hey, hey Al. You up yet, kid?”

The sun had risen, and Al had not slept well. He stared blearily at the wall next to his bed, listening to the pounding on the door behind him. After a few moments, he dragged a hand over his face, reaching up to rub the grit out of his eyes.

“Yeah,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Yeah. I'll be out in a second.”

“We'll save a plate for you,” Darius called through the door, then there were the sounds of heavy footsteps heading down the hall. Al distantly wondered what the hostess had thought of them the night before-- two massive men and a sixteen year old traveling together. After a few minutes, Al climbed out of bed and prepared himself for the day.

Downstairs, Al found both Heinkel and Darius sitting next to each other, huddled over the breakfast the inn had afforded them. Al sat down across from them at the table and set his suitcase down, and Darius pushed over a plate. Al polished it off quickly, and was munching on his last bite when Heinkel spoke up.

“So...” he said, reaching up to straighten the glasses on his nose. If his hair wasn't quite as slicked back as usual, Alphonse wisely chose not to comment. The hostess suddenly appeared at Al's side with a cup of coffee. Thanking her, he picked up the cup and drained it.

Heinkel waited for the hostess to leave before continuing.

“Did you take a look at what we found?”

“I did,” Alphonse replied, thinking of the needle that he'd re-wrapped in his tie and tucked into his suitcase. “With some due consideration, I'm fairly certain it's part of the scene. It had traces of an anesthetic you'd find in hospitals-- the kind used to knock people out pretty quickly.”

“If he was ambushed and drugged with something fast-acting, it'd explain why he didn't fight back,” Heinkel said quietly, eyes sliding around the room. There were a few people there, all people just passing through or regulars at the inn. Nobody was really looking at them.

“Yeah,” Darius continued, “If it's that kid, you'd expect destruction everywhere. He wouldn't go down without wrecking shop.”

Alphonse hummed in agreement, thinking about it. When his brother had first gone missing, the fact that there didn't appear to be a fight had raised more than one person's eyebrows.

He heard the rumors that started soon after. The ones that suggested that Ed hadn't been taken. People that whispered that maybe Ed couldn't take the stress of things, had maybe gone off the deep end and simply split. He was so close to Drachma after all, and it wouldn't be hard for an alchemist of his caliber to disappear.

Maybe his younger brother had been too much of a burden to care for.

That one had made Al sick to his very core. Ed had done a lot of things-- had made his mistakes in life-- but never had he ever abandoned anyone. Al refused to believe that rumor, but in the dark of night, lying in hotel bed after hotel bed, when the day's busyness couldn't keep his full attention anymore, insidious little whispers tugged at him, made him wonder. It was like little hooks buried in his skin, dragging him closer to despair. What if he _had_ been a burden? What if being forced to stay in the military for the paycheck was too much? What if what if what if had circulated in his head until he'd been ill.

Finding the needle with the drug in it helped, if only so much. It helped to know why his brother hadn't laid out some kind of transmutation in defense of himself. It helped to prove to Al that the people who whispered weren't the people who knew Ed the best.

It didn't help his imagination. If someone would go so far as to anesthetize his brother, what else were they doing to him?

“Are you two ready to go?” he asked instead of dwelling on this thought, “Our train is going to be here at three, and I'd like to do a pretty thorough sweep before we leave.”

Darius finished his coffee and the three stood. They each waved a cheerful farewell to the hostess, who distractedly waved back as she served several locals telling jokes. Smiling and greeting townspeople that they passed by, they quietly headed back down to the spot where they had found the syringe.

“So are we all going to split up, or...” Al trailed off at the stony looks both of the chimera shot him. “Guess not.”

“Good guess,” Heinkel replied. The two men looked at each other, silently communicating. “I'll stay with you. Darius will explore the other direction. We're both armed with flares, if either of us run into trouble we'll signal off.”

“Alright.”

They split off from each other. Once they'd made some distance, Heinkel and Al spread out from each other about ten feet apart, walking carefully to ensure they didn't step on any possible evidence. They traveled through the woods in silence, stopping several hours later when they reached a clearing.

Al's shoulders slumped.

“This is where the first search stopped,” he said morosely, turning to look back at the woods. “Nothing again, I guess. At least we got the needle. Maybe Darius found something...?”

Al glanced back at Heinkel, who was still staring out at the clearing. Al ducked his head, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the overhead sun.

“Heinkel?” he asked, looking back out at the clearing. “Do you see something?”

Heinkel grunted, then stepped out into the clearing. He walked out into the tall grass, head and shoulders above it while Al was swamped completely. He followed close behind, curious until they reached what Heinkel had been seeing.

A mud pit. Alphonse stared at it in confusion, frowning until he realized what he was looking at specifically. Mud pits didn't open up without reason, and Al could see the tire tracks in the ground that had torn up the natural plant life. He bent to look at them.

The tracks were wide-- a truck maybe? Judging by the dry tracks that crusted the edged of the mud pit, they didn't just appear there recently. Somebody had driven a truck into the clearing quite a few times.

“So why would someone drive all the way out here, hidden next to the trees?” Alphonse asked, eyes alighting on something in the mud. Carefully, he picked it out-- another syringe. This one was sitting in the fresh mud and didn't look quite as old. A newer victim, maybe? Ed had been the last State Alchemist to go missing, but Mustang had mentioned over the phone that civilian alchemists were being taken as well. He tucked this syringe into his suitcase next to the other one, then pulled out his current most treasured possession.

“A camera?” Heinkel rumbled, watching as Alphonse checked the camera over and raised it to his eye. He snapped a photo of the tire tracks, then another.

“Well, I can't exactly carry a tire track with me back to Central,” Alphonse replied, standing up straight and following the tracks with his eyes as they wound their way out of the clearing. “...Do we have a map?”

“No, but I've got a good sense of smell,” Heinkel replied, “And I don't get lost.”

“Oh _goody_ ,” Al replied, and the two set off. Alphonse noted that there were a lot of tracks, but no variation between them. It was either a lot of the same kind of vehicle, or a single vehicle was a very busy bee. Slowly, they followed the tracks up until--

“--A road?” Al asked, a bit incredulously. Sure enough, an asphalt road covered in potholes greeted them up ahead, stretching out away from the small wood and disappearing off into the distance. Dirt built up from the tracks traced an arc on the road, showing that they were going northward on the road. Al snapped a picture, then turned to Heinkel.

“Do you know where this road goes?” he asked, getting a negative, “It's so ill kept, I wonder if it's even on a map. I'll have to look.”

“There'll be maps back at the station, and we need to get going anyway,” Heinkel grunted, “Unless you feel like missing the train.”

Al would miss a thousand trains if it meant finding his brother, but had to concede the point. He doubted they would find much more than what they had now, and together the two walked back through the woods and met up with Darius at the path. The dark-haired man had a gas canister at his feet.

“Found this,” he grunted, “That's about it though, except for the smell of gas.”

Heinkel relayed what he and Alphonse had found while Al snapped pictures of the gas canister from different angles. When he was done, Darius set the canister off the path and the the three headed to the station. Al rattled a few cenz in his hand as he headed to the phone booth with a smile.

 

* * *

 

“So, two syringes and tire tracks?” Roy asked doubtfully,”Was that everything?”

Riza handed over several files, flipping them open for him and pointing out spots for him to sign along the dotted lines. If she was just getting him to sign blindly, she'd already gone through all of them herself to make sure there was nothing that needed real attention.

Strange, how being a higher rank suddenly made the paperwork _more_ ridiculous.

“ _It's more than what we had before_ ,” Alphonse chided, “ _And Darius found a gas canister. There was anesthetic in the syringes, which would explain why Brother wasn't able to fight back.”_

“Right,” Roy said quietly, reaching up to rub his forehead, “Are you coming back to Central?”

“ _I don't know,_ ” Alphonse replied, “ _I know there are a few leads I want to check before I come back down. Do you think there's some kind of tire track index I can read, or am I going to have to hold my photos up to every truck I find?”_

“I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest trying Colonel Armstrong,” Roy replied,smirking at Al's weary sigh, “...As... overly enthusiastic as he might be, being head of Intelligence does come with perks, and an index on vehicles would be right up that particular alley.”

Roy shifted the phone against his chin when Riza set down another file and tapped the front of it with a single finger, a strong code for ' _read this!'._

“And I'm certain he would be delighted in providing any help that he can. I know he keeps his own files on Fullmetal since he went missing.”

“ _Yeah,_ ” Alphonse cleared his throat. _“I'll see about finding a dark room available to develop these pictures and I'll send him some in the mail. Would you happen to have a number I can call to reach him?”_

Roy did, and he gave it over readily. The two chatted a bit more about Alphonse's future plans, then after some well wishes and 'be careful!' warnings on Roy's part, they hung up. Roy pulled the file closer to him and looked at it.

“What's this?”

“Major Bloche from North City sent it in, sir,” Riza said, folding her hands behind her as Roy started flicking through the file. “There's been some Drachman movement about ten miles south of Fickwarren. It's been a dormant cell they've kept tabs on for a few years, but apparently it's been seeing some activity the last few months that has them worried. It doesn't explicitly state it, but I suspect Major Bloche is laying down plans for a raid.”

“Why'd they send it down here?” Roy asked, frowning. “General Minsk is in charge in North City, I'm sure he would've appreciated this more than I do.”

“They're wanting to borrow Warrant Officer Falman, sir.”

Roy gave her an askance look, flipping several pages of the file to find the request for officer expertise.

“...Why not Briggs?” he asked, confused, “They have men literally right there at their disposal.”

“I called. General Armstrong has already shot them down,” Riza quietly explained, “She's still stretched thin at Briggs after the annual transfers. She needs more men, not less. She can't afford to loan her officers out. She's the one who recommended Vato to begin with. He has a near encyclopedic knowledge of the area after his stint with Briggs, and his recent grasp of the Drachman language would be very handy.”

Roy hummed, a little irritated but unable to find fault with the argument. The workload had lessened a bit around the office, and Vato might appreciate the extra money that came from a temporary field job. After a moment, he sighed.

“Send him in,” he murmured, leaning back in his seat. Riza stepped out of the office, and after a minute, Vato stepped in and shut the door behind him. His posture was impeccable and his expression as unreadable as always, but Roy could see the slight nervousness in the set of his shoulders and the way he immediately saluted. They weren't usually called into Roy's office so officially-- Roy typically meandered out to talk.

Roy cleared his throat and quickly alleviated the man's fear of being disciplined for some imagined transgression. He went through the assignment and the expertise request, and Vato's shoulders visibly relaxed.

“Ah, sir. I wouldn't mind helping,” he said quietly, “...If there isn't as much work around here and it wouldn't be difficult to have me gone for a while. ...I also wouldn't mind being paid double for the amount of time I'm up there.”

“It sounds like Major Bloche could use some help,” Roy replied, rather wishing he could have promoted Vato up with the rest of his staff. As it was, he and Kain were at the top of their pay grade and couldn't go up any further. “And it might serve a dual purpose if you can manage it while you're up north.”

Vato was quiet, then he tilted his head.

“Edward, sir?”

“Correct,” Roy tapped his pen on the paper, “There's a possibility this will turn into a raid so you may not be able to maintain contact with me, but I'd like you to keep an eye out for anything that might involve Fullmetal and these kidnappings up there. Any tiny hint might be able to help.”

“Of course, sir,” Vato said, “I'll keep both eyes out if at all possible. We all want him home.”

Roy took that as an acceptance of the assignment and signed his name on the file. Vato left and Riza came back in, and Roy passed the file off to her to be spirited away a moment later. He leaned back in his seat and side-eyed the stack of paperwork that Riza had left behind her. He had hoped that, after ranking up, his paperwork load would be lessened and delegated around. Instead it seemed to have increased.

Apparently the only empty desk in all of Central was the Fuhrer's. Roy usually didn't wish heart attacks upon people, but had privately given Grumman the stink eye the one time he'd walked into the Fuhrer's office and found the man with his feet propped up on his desk.

Havoc came in with another stack of paper and dropped it on Roy's desk before marching back out.

Roy _sighed_.

* * *

 

Ed couldn't do it.

He was going to break. He was going to cave. He could feel it with every inch of his being. It felt like someone had carved holes in him, and someone else was putting pressure on him, waiting for all his weak spots to shatter and bend. He couldn't fucking take it anymore. Something had to give and it was going to be him.

He hadn't been out of the straitjacket in _months_.

The surgeries had stopped. Ed thanked whoever watched over godless alchemists for that relief. The surgeries had _stopped_.

But this meant that the relief that came with being un-straitjacketed was gone. At least during recovery he would be laid out straight in a hospital bed, arms pinioned down at his sides. Now though, he was held constantly inside of the hated canvas and leather prison. His elbow felt like it was swollen up and fire-like pain raced up and down his shoulder with every movement.

His back hurt too-- his spine, specifically. A constant, throbbing ache had taken up residence in his backbone, probably a result of being electrocuted for days on end. He twitched involuntarily a lot now, sometimes hard enough to wake himself up.

Ed tried not to think about sleep. Sleep was a brief and fleeting thing. He barely remembered it. His last round of torment had been about a week ago, and had consisted of being hung up on a metal frame by his straitjacket. Jumper cables had been clamped to the frame, running over to a generator that Ed couldn't see.

Putting his feet down on the frame shocked him. Holding his feet up took energy, and hanging from the leather straps that held him pulled his arms against his chest and kept his rib cage from expanding. Out of breath and exhausted, Ed would inevitably put his feet back down to take the electricity. He'd screamed and they muzzled him. They'd put a clock in front of him-- the first one he'd seen since his arrival in the facility.

Ed had watched as 42 hours ticked by, agonizingly slow. 42 hours without sleep, 42 hours before they'd hosed him down and put him back into the wheelchair to be rolled into the interrogation room again.

“ _No sir no sir no sir no sir no sir--_ ”

Ed shook his head, trying to clear it. He'd tried sleeping but the overhead lights felt like they were burning holes in his head and his thoughts were fractured, broken and circulating wildly. His imagination was running wild with him and every time he managed to get to sleep he had nightmares of the straitjacket becoming his skin, and Alphonse was trying to take it off of him, trying to peel it open but letting Ed's guts spill out everywhere in the process and--

\--and Ed released a hard breath, feeling tears well in the corners of his eyes. He had to stop _thinking_ he had to fucking just stop everything, all he had to do was say ' _yes sir'_ and it would be over, wouldn't it?

His automail port on his thigh felt like it was burning, and the skin around the scar tissue had blistered. Ed pulled his legs up tight to him and rocked against the padding, trying to burrow into the corner of his tiny cell.

At least he was in here. This was safe. Nobody actually hurt him in here. He was safe in his cell. Sometimes they locked him in another place after being tortured, a closet on the interrogation floor. He'd be left in his wheelchair, unable to move and staring at the wall, muzzled and panicking as the tiny space pressed in on him. It was hot inside the closet, making him sweat and itch and gasp desperately for air, struggling against the restraints because of how hard it was to breathe.

Ed didn't like that room. The soldiers banged on the door while he in there, kept him awake, kept him scared. He was left alone in his padded cell. The only people that bothered him in here were the orderlies, and even they only came in to let him use the bathroom. They put down food on occasion, but that honor was often left to his interrogator these days. The man would put a dog bowl on the ground and watch Ed desperately try to eat after a round, watch as he choked and half-threw it up and then force Ed to eat the regurgitated mess by pressing his boot into the back of Ed's head and--

\--Ed buried his face into the padding and tried not to think again.

“Hey Al,” he whispered, trying to get his brain geared towards something else. “Hey, I was thinking about something again. When I can get enough money together, you just wanna fuck off somewhere and travel? Like Creata, maybe? I could use a day at the beach. I don't really know how to vacation, I've never taken one before but I'm pretty sure even if I just wind up writing math equations in the sand and cleaning salt water out of my automail it would still be a lot better than this.”

Ed swallowed.

“We could go to Xing too,” he said, “See Mei Chan again. I bet she'd be fucking over the moon to see you and you could study alkahestry even better over there. The doctors over here in Amestris are gonna be climbing over themselves to have you on staff, you know that? Oh yeah, we could see Ling again too. And Ran Fan. She's a solid girl, I bet we could have some cool sparring sessions over there. And we could make fun of Ling's robes. Or I'll make fun of Ling's clothes and you'll tell me not to be rude. That's fine. That's fun. Hey, I was thinking since we have an apartment now you can have a cat. I know you've been wanting one-- well, you've been wanting a million-- but we're kind of settled now so I guess we can get one. I get to name it though. That's my condition. I'm going to name it Gargoyle. I don't care if it's a boy or a girl, because Gargoyle is an awesome name and you just don't like admitting I'm right, and...”

Ed kept his eyes closed, keeping up the stream of chatter as best he could. Occasionally he staggered into sleep, interrupted with nightmares.

Needles were jammed into his skin, thin tubes spilling out all over the place. Blood was pouring out of them into pools around him and he couldn't move, couldn't fight against it. Ed woke up with a start and kept talking. Soon after that he dreamed about the eyes and hands inside the Gate, looming all around him and touching, wrapping around him tighter and tighter until he couldn't breathe--

\--Ed woke up screaming. When he calmed down, he hunkered back into his corner and kept talking. Talking filled the silence. He could talk to Al and to Mustang and to Winry this way. Sometimes he imagined sitting across from Hawkeye and having tea at her house again. Sometimes he thought about fixing stew with Granny Pinako in her tiny kitchen, just chatting about automail customers and the vegetable garden and how much the price of scrap had been going up.

He argued with Mustang in his office, when his eyes were closed, but he also enjoyed the quiet talks they used to have, when Mustang would pick him up in his car and they'd just drive mindlessly around winding city streets. Ed imagined when Mustang was recovering from his blindness in the hospital, just chilling out in his room and reading to him when Breda was busy helping Havoc.

He kept these 'conversations' up in between broken sleep and occasional lulls where he let his mind get away from him, where he just stared into the padding, tracing the lines of the fabric weave with his eyes. There was nothing at all in his head during these times, nothing but a faint buzzing noise in his ears. When he managed to pull himself out of it, Ed would go back to talking at the walls.

An orderly came in. Ed ignored him in favor of his conversation with Havoc. Talking to Havoc about their respective people-watching habits was infinitely better than paying attention to the man that was taking the clamp off his catheter and helping him piss into a bedpan. The orderly finished wiping him down and helped him back into his corner before leaving, bedpan in hand.

The door shut behind him. Ed paid it no mind, none at all until it finally opened again and revealed two soldiers and his wheelchair waiting for him.

“Please,” Ed whispered, falling back as far as he could into the padding as the soldiers came and started manhandling him out of his corner. They'd given up making him walk-- he could barely get his legs underneath him these days, much less carry his weight. They pulled the chains off of him and began to drag him to the wheelchair. “Please, please no, please not again--”

He'd say it. He'd say 'yes sir'. Ed felt sick to his stomach as the soldiers buckled him into the wheelchair and he began heaving soft sobs. He'd do it. He was so tired of this, he was so sick of not sleeping. He had to get out of this building-- he'd rather be drugged into senselessness at this point. It felt like this prison was crushing him slowly, picking him apart piece by piece.

Ed didn't realize how loudly he was crying until one of the soldiers put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly.

Ed was grateful for the touch. A lot of the soldiers were vicious fucks, but there were the occasional ones that, if not overtly kind, were at least not as quick to hit him with a cattle prod. Ed wondered distantly how pathetic he looked that his torturers thought he needed some assurance. He knew he looked crazy-- he'd seen his reflection in the stainless steel bed pan. His hair was a wild, matted mess; he had lost a large amount of weight and his eyes were sunken in, stained with deep shadows from lack of sleep.

Ed sniffled, trying to clear his nose. If they muzzled him he needed a clear airway. When his nose remained stuffed, hysteria clawed a painful route up his insides, searing him with panic. He burst into tears again in spite of his attempts at getting calm-- what if they muzzled him what if he suffocated like that what if what if what if--

They turned the corner, and Ed's heart stopped.

He hadn't seen another prisoner before this. He suspected that they were all kept on a schedule to prevent them from seeing each other, but apparently the scientists and the soldiers weren't trading their memos. Across from him, two orderlies were pushing another straitjacketed man in a wheelchair. His hair was a dark brown, in a wreck like Ed's was, and he was pale, but his eyes were alert. He was just about to go into surgery, Ed realized. The older man looked at Ed and, after several moments of stupefied silence, his eyes went wide with recognition.

Well. Ed _was_ the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Drachman was being spoken. The soldiers were angry-- the orderlies were arguing back. Ed and the man stared at each other in bewildered silence. Another moment passed, and the man seemed to take in Ed's full appearance, took note of the burns on Ed's left foot. In one single glance, he saw every single bruise. He saw every single litany of pain that wrote its way across his body.

He saw Ed's tears.

“Don't do it,” the man croaked, in a voice like he hadn't quite recovered from a ventilator tube yet. Ed could sympathize. “Don't you dare.”

“What?” Ed managed, and felt his wheelchair being yanked backwards.

“Don't you give in—” the man started shouting, his voice breaking, “Don't you dare fucking tell them anything!”

Ed's chair was swung all the way around and he was wheeled in the other direction. The other prisoner kept shouting.

“Don't you fucking let them have anything about alchemy, do you hear me? You'll get nothing out of it-- they'll kill everybody here! They'll kill _you_ when they're done with you! Don't you do it! Don't you dare tell them how you do it! _DON'T YOU TELL THEM! DON'T--_ ”

Ed heard muffled screams and concluded that they had muzzled the man, and were likely shocking him with a prod. He couldn't turn and look though. He remained quiet for the rest of the trip down to the interrogation room, though the soldiers were talking in angry, hushed voices.

His interrogator, the older man, was sitting in his usual seat when Ed was rolled into the room and pushed up to the table. Over his head, the soldier that had squeezed his shoulder spoke. His interrogator grunted and wrote something down, tucking it off to the side before speaking. After a few moments of silence, he nodded sharply and looked at Ed. He smiled congenially.

“How are you today?”

Ed swallowed twice. He knew he looked like hell now, with a swollen, puffy face from crying.

“...Fine, sir,” he rasped. His nose was draining now, snot dripping out of his nose and mucus in the back of his throat. It wasn't like he could do anything about it though.

“That's good to hear,” The man folded his fingers together and looked at Ed keenly. “My men here say you've been crying. Are you sure everything's alright? If there's something bothering you, I'm sure we can work to fix it.”

That was a trap if Ed ever heard one. Likely if he said he was going insane, they'd ramp their torture up.

“No, sir,” Ed croaked, “I'm fine.”

The man nodded, tapping his pen on the desk.

“Would you like to start then?”

Ed hesitated, then nodded slowly.

His interrogator reached across the table and turned on the recording device in front of Ed, adjusting the microphone for a moment. There was a long pause before they heard the cylinder inside the device click as it turned over, and the man started his usual set of questions.

“Is your name Major Edward Elric?”

The mucus had gathered in the back of his mouth. Ed worked his tongue. He couldn't remember the last sip of water he'd been allowed, and his spit felt thick and tacky as a result.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” the man praised, leaning his chin on one hand as he watched Ed closely. “...Are you the Fullmetal Alchemist?”

Ed worked the mucus around in his mouth. The snot from his nose dribbled over his lip.

“...Yes, sir.”

His interrogator smiled a bit.

“...Very good. Were you caught trespassing on Drachman territory?”

There it was. Ed hadn't gotten further down the list of questions than this. He could end it here. He didn't know what would happen to him after, but the surgeries were beginning to be preferable. All he had to do was say “yes, sir” to everything. Ed worked his throat several times but could get nothing to come out. Across from him, the older man tilted his head.

“Major Elric? Were you caught trespassing on Drachman territory?”

_Don't you dare tell them! They'll kill everybody here! They'll kill_ you _when they're done!_

The other prisoner's words rang in his ears. Death at this point was the better option, Ed supposed, and that might have been his choice if it weren't for the thought of the other State Alchemists imprisoned inside the building. He could endanger and kill himself for his own comfort, but caving in could mean the deaths of the other captives. What point would the Drachmans have in preserving the lives of a bunch of possible enemies if they had the cooperation of an alchemist who didn't even _need_ arrays?

“Were you caught tre--”

“No, sir.”

His interrogator paused, some of his smug half-smile fading a bit. Apparently he had thought Edward was about to break.

Ed had been. He'd been so close. Seeing the other prisoner though, had bolstered him a little. If he could do this Ed could too. If other people locked up in here could handle this, so could he.

His interrogator sighed very deeply, disappointment evident in the tone of it. He reached out and clicked the recorder off, leaning across the table to do so. Ed tasted the mucus in his mouth and, on impulse, reared his head back as much as possible with the collar bolt-snapped to the wheelchair. He spat with as much force as he could manage, spattering the interrogator right in the face.

The shock to the neck came almost immediately and Ed screamed a curse, twisting up in his chair and straining against the straps. His spine, already in pain, pulsated with the electric shock. Breathing hard and heart slamming, Ed wrenched his eyes open to look at the man across from him. Strangely enough, he didn't even look angry. He withdrew a handkerchief and wiped his face, then stood and walked around the table to Ed's side.

Ed's wheelchair was yanked around so fast his head swung with the momentum. Before he could speak, his interrogator pushed the handkerchief across Ed's face, smearing his snot and mucus and spittle across his nose and cheeks. One large hand fisted in his hair and held his head still, and the other hand with the handkerchief closed tightly over his mouth and nose.

Ed couldn't breathe. He strained, then twisted, trying to fight. His feet struggled against the cuffs that held them flush to the wheelchair. His lungs sat like rocks in his chest and his arms flapped inside his straitjacket, too bound to do anything useful. His chest burned and it felt like his eyes were starting to bulge inside their sockets. Just as his vision was darkening at the edges, the man released his mouth, holding his nose pinched shut so that Ed was forced to gasp for air through his mouth. The man held the handkerchief close to his own face and, with a wet snorting sound, hawked up his own loogie.

Before Ed could connect the dots, the handkerchief was shoved into his open mouth. Ed gagged and retched as the interrogator let go of his nose and forced his mouth shut. Seconds later, one of the soldiers shoved the muzzle over his head and strapped it on, holding his jaws shut.

Ed forced himself to stay calm, forced his stomach to stop trembling as the other man's spit sat on his tongue. His interrogator bent over so that he was within inches of Ed's face.

“Amestris is just a child compared to the great nation of Drachma,” the man said, his voice dangerously soft. His eyes were dark brown, Ed noted. “A little child pushing its boundaries and throwing temper tantrums. And children that throw tantrums receive punishments.”

The man tapped the wide panel on the front of the muzzle.

“I think some time in a time-out will do you some good.”

The man straightened up and looked at the soldiers, saying something in Drachman. Ed was wheeled out of the interrogation room. Ahead, the little closet loomed, the door standing wide open. Ed prepared himself to be locked inside the closet again, but they rolled right past. Ed tried to look over his shoulder but couldn't twist his body against the straps that kept him pinioned inside the wheelchair. He made a querying noise against the leather muzzle over his face and was summarily ignored.

They reached a lift and boarded it, going down. Ed watched through the gate as another floor passed them by and the arrow pointed to the very bottom sublevel. When the lift came to a halt, the soldier pushed Edward out into a long hall lined with white brick. The basement level smelled strongly like formaldehyde, turning Ed's stomach. As they pushed into the room at the end of the hallway, Edward felt his heart plummet.

“ _Mmmmmnogh--!_ ”

Ed started thrashing against his restraints, leaning side to side and trying desperately to rip his ankles free of the cuffs. The soldiers barely seemed to notice his struggles as they wheeled Edward into the center of the room and greeted the man leaning over the autopsy table. Body freezers lined the wall, several trays extended out with corpses resting in them. The bodies were all nameless to Ed, but all clearly Amestrian. Some looked practically untouched, others looked like they'd had a hack saw taken to them.

The soldiers and the doctor talked for a minute, completely ignoring Edward's panicked thrashing. After a brief conversation, one soldier grabbed the wheelchair again and began pushing it in the direction of a nearby door. Behind him, the doctor snapped off his gloves and followed after them, holding open said door. The room inside looked like it might have been the morgue thirty years prior, with antique autopsy tables-- one overturned-- old dissection equipment scattered across the floor,and what looked like an oven door built into the stone wall.

A crematorium, Ed realized, for burning bodies.

Along the opposite wall was another door, a heavy concrete one that squealed as the doctor pulled it open. Ed whined into the leather muzzle. His eyes went to the old body freezers on the back wall, and it felt as though he'd been punched at the sight. One door was open, a padlock hanging open from the latch. A tray was fully extended, but it was clear that this tray had been repurposed to hold someone more alive than a corpse. Leather straps were built in all over the tray, designed specifically to hold someone down.

“ _Pleegh—nommgh---!_ ” Ed pleaded into the muzzle, struggling back and forth as he was wheeled over to the body cooler. The soldiers and the doctor began undoing the straps that bound him to the wheelchair. Trying to take this opportunity, Ed thrashed and fought, although the soldiers were twice his size and more well-fed and had him on the tray in a matter of thirty seconds. Ed lurched upwards, but was bodily pinned down. The soldiers ignored Ed's muffled pleas as they and the doctor pulled the straps across him, buckling him into the tray.

The last cuff was pulled tight on his left ankle, and Ed found himself unable to move more than an inch or two in every direction. He couldn't even lift his head off the tray because of the strap across his forehead. Satisfied that the restraints were secure all over, the soldiers and the doctor began sliding the tray into the cooler. Darkness passed overhead, and Ed's field of vision became restricted to the old brickwork all around him.

Edward began screaming helplessly into the muzzle.

He kicked against the cuffs,lurching and fighting even as the door to the cooler swung shut and he heard the sound of the padlock closing with a decisive _snick_. A minute later there was the sound of the concrete door screeching to a firm shut. Ed strained to hear, breath coming in sharp gasps through his nose, but the concrete walls deadened any sound beyond them.

Ed was left all alone, strapped down to uselessness inside of a morgue cooler.

Ed stopped screaming and broke into sobs instead, muffled to near-nothingness because of the muzzle. Tears rolled down his cheeks, burning at the corners of his eyes and beading on the leather that was wrapped around his face. Inside his mouth, spit-- not all entirely his-- began to pool at the back of his throat. Risking being sick, Ed forced himself to swallow it down.

At least, Ed supposed as he laid there, the cooler did not appear to be in operation. Whether that was for better or worse he didn't know, because his body heat quickly filled the small space, nearly suffocating him.

Ed didn't know how long he laid like that. His face was tacky with snot and tears and sweat was making him itch all over. He passed the time in the darkness trying to think of conversations again, but it was hard to keep them going in his head when his thoughts scattered at every small sound. After a little while, he realized the strange skittering he kept hearing was the sound of rats.

With that knowledge, sleep was an impossibility. Terror reigned in his mind, and all Ed could think of when he tried to lay back and rest was the idea of rats getting into his cooler, crawling all over him and gnawing the bits of skin they could find. He started crying again at this point, gasping for air desperately. Would he run out of air? The closet wasn't air tight and his cell was much bigger-- the cooler was almost sealed shut. Ed tried not to think too hard about it, tried to keep his breathing even, but panic was constant presence in his mind and--

–the concrete door screeched open. Ed listened, eyes wide in the darkness of the cooler. It couldn't have been more than a few hours, maybe? Time was strange in the dark.

The padlock was undone, and the door to the cooler pulled open. Several hands grabbed the tray and rolled him back out. Two soldiers were there but not the doctor. They unstrapped Ed from the tray and wordlessly helped him down and back into the wheelchair. To Ed's confusion, they didn't strap him into the wheelchair. They just started pushing him out of the cooler room and back to the autopsy room.

One look around, and Ed knew why.

The autopsy table had been cleared of the corpse from earlier, and now the body of the other prisoner he had seen was laying open on it. A few seconds passed and Ed realized the man was still _alive_ , eyes taped open and a tube sticking out of his mouth. A ventilator machine next to the table hissed every few seconds. Several surgeons were wrist deep inside his pinned open body. Ed was wheeled over to the table and yanked to his feet, and Ed saw the hook and chain just as it disappeared behind his back, connected to the straitjacket and holding him forcibly upright.

His interrogator was there.

“We determined it was best to euthanize Subject 22 after his outburst in the hallway,” his interrogator said, and Ed stared at him in horror, “The doctors wished to examine his organs as they're removed and preserved. He's on a paralytic, but he isn't anesthetized, so I fear that he might be in a good deal of pain right now. Seeing as how you two had a brief meeting, I rather thought you'd like to be at his bedside while he passes.”

Ed looked back over at the other prisoner in time to watch as a doctor lowered a pair of scissors into his body and began to snip at something. Looking into the prisoner's eyes, forced open, he knew.

He was feeling _everything_.

Ed tried to beg, tried to twist in his straitjacket-- harder and with more vigor than he'd ever done for just himself, but could do nothing. The muzzle held his pleas in and he was ultimately too weak to do anything. Finally, Ed hung limp and did all he could do-- he watched. He watched as tissue and organs were cut away. He made eye contact, hoping his gaze could convey what his voice could not-- that he was sorry. That he wouldn't give up.

He watched as finally, _fucking finally,_ the light faded out of the man's eyes. Ed heard the final blip of the heart monitor as the man died. The surgeons continued their work without paying any attention to their 'patient's' death. The interrogator patted Ed on the shoulder and Ed directed the most venomous glare he could muster at the man.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” the interrogator said, ignoring Ed's expression, “We'll give you a few days in your cell to let you mourn.”

Ed was taken off the hook and dropped back into the wheelchair. As he was strapped into place, he glared at the man's retreating back and made a mental promise to the dead man on the table. He would make it. He wouldn't cave in or give anything away. He would do exactly what the other prisoner had told him.

He wouldn't give in, no matter what was done to him.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are finally picking up a bit here. I'm sorry if this chapter feels a bit choppy, i got stuck in several places trying to move scenes along and wound up forcing said scenes through to get where I wanted them to go. As before, there's some harsh stuff in here, so please pay attention to the tags overhead.
> 
> AND THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUPER KIND COMMENTS. I'm sorry it takes a while to get to and respond but I promise that I always will stop by and reply to your comments. I know a lot of people have come over from tumblr to here following my art but for anybody starting here and is interested [this is my tumblr art tag](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art) and [this is everything related to this fiction](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au). I update that pretty often so if you want extra chunks and tidbits of this fiction that's your place to be. I'll try to keep the updates here about every two weeks, maybe three at the most unless something happens.

Alphonse was quiet, staring at his papers with a sigh. He was sitting in Madame Christmas' little tavern, sitting at the corner of the bar and ignoring the people around him as they milled about. He wasn't sure if Chris Mustang had ordered her girls away or not, but they seemed to steer clear of him except to bring him the occasional drink. Scattered all around were papers, notes, and a pack of envelopes full of lead after dead end after another lead.

After a few minutes of reading, his eyes trailed up to the photograph he had sitting in front of him. Ed waved up at him from the photo, grinning and happy. It was shot shortly after the Promised Day, before Ed started getting bills and worries. Having his younger brother returned to his body was still a fresh thing on his mind, the defeat of Father and the Homunculi still had everybody in a celebratory mood.

Al looked back at his papers.

It had been a year and a half now since his brother's disappearance. Since his last visit to Lodsenburg, three more civilian alchemists had gone missing. At each scene Alphonse had found tire tracks and discarded syringes. He had investigated so closely at the scenes that Mustang had been forced to gently remind him that he wasn't exactly authorized to do so, although the man had defended every single query made into his involvement.

In spite of this, Al had managed to determine that there were at least two vehicles being used by whoever was kidnapping alchemists. The second set of tracks-- narrower, less like an off-road vehicle and more like a road traveling car-- were only at the scenes of the State Alchemist kidnappings. There hadn't been any at his brothers, Al figured, because there'd been a back road for said car to sit on instead of dirt and mud. 

Al sent in the photos he'd taken of all the tracks to Colonel Armstrong, and as eager as the man had been to help, he hadn't been able to figure out what kind of vehicles the tires belonged to. They hadn't belonged to anything in the data that Intelligence had compiled of literally every vehicle model in Amestris.

“ _It's alright_ ,” Alphonse had told the crying man awkwardly, “ _People jury-rig vehicles around here all the time. There's no telling what kind of cars the tracks belonged to._ ”

It wasn't alright, but Al wasn't about to tell Armstrong that. The man felt bad enough and it certainly wasn't his fault.

Al pulled the pack of envelopes close to him and tugged apart the twine binding them together. He sifted through them, discarding a few in favor of other, more likely leads. He read through each paper, carefully scanning over each one and playing process of elimination. Finally, he picked one. This was in Kessel, where Ed's layover train had been, where he had last talked to Al on the phone. There had been a supposed sighting there of Ed. Alphonse usually discounted sightings-- too easy to get led on a wild goose chase-- but seeing as Kessel had been on Ed's route to Lodsenburg, he had decided to keep it in mind.

And now it was his best current lead.

Al drained his drink and gathered his papers, already decided. On his way out, he caught Madame Christmas' eye and waved gratefully, then tucked his papers into his bag and jogged out into the street.

Outside, the wind was chilly and wet, having just rained. Though slightly tipsy, Alphonse was careful not to look like he'd been drinking as he wandered the streets and occasionally passed by police officers. The last thing he wanted when he found his brother was a public intoxication charge on his record, and he definitely didn't want Mustang to have to bail him out of jail.

Ed would never let him live it down.

Darius and Heinkel were in a cheap hotel for the night, but Al was staying essentially rent free at Mustang's house, nestled cozily between two other townhouses. Alphonse had asked him once why he hadn't gone on to buy something bigger and more... “general-y” as he had put it at the time. Being such a high rank and a State Alchemist meant that Mustang wasn't in the poorhouse, even with funding Alphonse to go running about the country.

Apparently though, it was partially because Mustang spent most of his life at work anyway, and partially because Ed knew where he lived. In the off chance that Ed managed to escape whoever was keeping him, Mustang wanted him to be able to find his house.

Mustang had told him this while drinking, and had drunkenly sworn Al to secrecy over it. Al had promised, of course, but suspected that since the entire office staff had been privy to the conversation, everybody kind of already knew. Al smiled as he thought of Falman's send-off party several months prior. The man had been pretty pumped for the extra money, but not exactly looking forward to being buried in snow again. Al had wished him well with a gift of nice new gloves and an encyclopedia on northern Amestrian wildlife, including the four species of angry, possibly man-eating bears and the two kinds of cougars.

Al's heart was in the gloves, but the encyclopedia was something he'd been fairly sure that Ed would have gotten him. Judging by the long, watery look Falman had given it, he'd gotten the idea.

Al arrived at Mustang's house and fished the key out of his pocket. Letting himself in, he paused at the smell of Xingese takeout that wafted through the house.

“Yours is on the kitchen table!” Mustang called from the office. The door was slightly ajar, warm yellow light spilling out into the living room. Al took his shoes off in the doorway and hung up his coat, careful to tuck his bag out of the way.

“Thank you!” he called back, heading into the kitchen. He seized upon the styrofoam boxes sitting on the table, grateful that they were still warm as he munched down on this newest dish. Mustang tended to pick him up something different every single time he was in Central, as if he knew how much Al liked trying new things.

He probably knew, Al conceded, finishing off his meal and tossing the boxes in the garbage. Mustang was clever like that. Al washed his fork and put it in the drainer, then headed over to the office. Inside, Mustang was seated at his desk, glasses perched on his nose as he pored over his paperwork. He looked up when Alphonse knocked on the doorjamb.

“Sorry for coming in so late,” Al apologized first.

“You're quite possibly the quietest and cleanest roommate I could have ever asked for,” Mustang replied, “If you came in at three in the morning I wouldn't have minded because I'm certain you wouldn't have woken me up, and you'd probably take my trash out in the process. Did you get everything sorted?”

“Yes,” Alphonse said, opting to gloss over the compliment instead of trying to examine it. “...There's a lead in Kessel, where Brother's layover was at.”

“Not very far north,” Mustang pointed out, then shook his head, “But since it's Kessel and it's connected to Fullmetal, you're probably right in going to check it out. You're taking Darius and Heinkel with you?”

“Yes sir, like always. I'm leaving tomorrow too.”

“So soon?” Mustang tapped his pen on the table. “...You should stop by the office before you leave. Nobody's seen you since Vato's send-off. I'm sure the others wouldn't mind seeing you again.”

Al thought about it.

“I'll have some time before the train,” he said, “I could stop by and say hi.”

He leaned away from the door, yawning.

“I'll let you get back to work,” he said, “I'm heading to bed now, if that's alright.”

Mustang nodded, and Al left the doorway of the office and headed upstairs. Unless it was the occasional lead, or if he was drunk, Al was hard pressed to get Mustang to openly talk about Ed.

He knew how much it hurt, for Ed to have been missing for this long, but Al would rather talk about him. He wanted to talk about what Ed had been working on; the flights of genius his brother had been on or the latest eccentric habit of his that he'd observed; he wanted to talk about the restaurant Ed had found and was obsessed with, and the way his brother ate cereal, _without milk,_ because he was a heathen.

Ed still existed beyond just being _missing_.

Al sighed deeply through his nose as he entered his bedroom. The bed called to him, his blankets done up nice and neat. The bed next to his was Ed's from the apartment, and Alphonse had made a point of just tossing the blankets in a rumpled mess on the mattress. It was scandalous, Al decided; their mother had taught them better, but Ed never made his bed. According to him he didn't understand the point of it since he was going to 'mess it all up again anyway'.

Al had pointed out, back then, that Ed still combed his hair whenever it got messy. Ed had flipped him the bird (his standardized answer for an argument he couldn't win) and still didn't make his bed.

Al shut the door behind him and collapsed on the bed. After some due consideration, he shrugged out of his sweater and kicked off his pants. Typically he folded up his clothes, but after having just come off a train and now finding himself ready to board the next, he found himself a bit too tired to care about it.

When it was he and Ed running around the country in search of the stone, Al had been in a suit of armor. He never ate or got tired. Thinking on it now, Alphonse remembered the hard, brave front his brother put on for the benefit of others. He never seemed tired, he never seemed to run out of energy until nobody was looking. Alphonse remembered watching his brother climb into bed after days of running on fumes, less like he was going to rest and more like he was finally breaking down.

After a few minutes, Al dragged his blankets around him and fell asleep.

The next day Al found himself walking through Central HQ, heading up to the office. Nobody stopped him or said anything about his presence-- either Mustang had given him a pass and he didn't know it, or everyone was so used to seeing Ed stomp his way through headquarters that another teenager didn't really register.

Al turned the corner into Mustang's office and--

\--stopped.

“Um,” he said awkwardly, and six heads whipped around to look at him. “...Am I interrupting?”

“Certainly not,” Hawkeye said, stepping away from the circus act in the middle of the room. “Sergeant Fuery's just doing some minor electrical work. It's good to see you again, Alphonse.”

Fuery stuck his head out of the ceiling tiles and smiled at Al. He was standing on Havoc's shoulders, who was standing on a desk, and Breda was standing behind Havoc and steadying them. Or maybe just being a pest. It was always hard to tell with him. Mustang was leaning against the doorjamb to his inner office and was wearing an expression torn between concern and amusement.

Hawkeye was supervising, and just looked disapproving of the whole thing.

Second Lieutenant Focke was the only one studiously not involved, though his desk was just below whatever Fuery was working on. He also appeared to be the only one with a mountain of paperwork, but Alphonse opted not to say anything in his favor. Seeing the man still made him somewhat bitter. It was _his_ decision to set the case aside that made it so nobody knew about the disappearing alchemists until Ed had gone missing as well. Al ignored him, setting his bag and the file he was holding on the edge of his desk as he walked over.

“...So what's going on?”

“A light was flickering,” Hawkeye explained primly, looking rather annoyed with the whole thing, “We changed the bulb but it didn't seem to help. I put in an order for maintenance to come in several days ago. Apparently, however, the maintenance department appears to have forgotten their function, because we haven't seen any of them. In the name of workplace safety, it was decided that Fuery can fix the light himself.”

Alphonse dubiously eyed the wavering tower of men in the middle of the room, and decided not to mention to Hawkeye that fixing the electricity might be more dangerous than just leaving the wires as they were. Judging by the look on her face, she'd been outvoted on the matter, and Al had always known that discretion was the better part of valor.

Havoc looked down at him as he stepped up to the desk.

“Hey kiddo,” he greeted Al, hands clenching around Fuery's ankles. Al smiled up at him. He wondered, privately, if seeing Havoc with strong, working legs felt the same as Ed seeing him back in his body.

“Hey,” Al replied, craning his neck up to look up into the moved ceiling tile, “...I came by to say hi, but I feel like I should have bought a ticket and popcorn.”

“Haha,” Fuery mock laughed from where he was half-protruding from the ceiling. “It is good to see you again, Al. How long are you going to be in Central?”

“I'm leaving here in a few minutes,” Al explained, “I've got another lead and I'm going to follow up on it. Just thought I'd stop in to say hi and bye, really.”

“Well, I guess we don't have to tell you to be careful,” Breda grunted from where he was still ambiguously helping. “We'd tell your brother that, and hear back later that he'd wrecked a terrorist cell, blown up three warehouses, and emotionally damaged some local politician.”

“Brother _would_ ,” Al said faintly, smiling appreciatively at Breda, “But I think I know better.”

“I don't know; you fooling around with that one mayor's daughter, and trespassing onto that old mining property got us a few upset phone calls,” Havoc said, wincing as Fuery ground a heel into his shoulder, “Oi, bony feet; hurry up already!”

“You know this stuff can be pretty delicate, right?” Fuery called, voice muffled, at the same time Al started stuttering defenses.

“I wasn't _fooling_ _around_ , she was helping me investigate something I might not have had access to otherwise. Her dad just misunderstood,” Al sniffed, “And I only trespassed a little bit.”

“Are there degrees of trespassing?” Mustang asked from his perch by the door.

“Yes,” Alphonse said mulishly, “There are when you don't realize you're trespassing until the entire police force is yelling at you in the middle of the woods. There weren't any property lines, fences or signs up. How was I supposed to know?”

This question was answered by the sound of the telephone ringing in Mustang's office. The man sipped his coffee, pretending at first like he couldn't hear it. The sheer force of the _look_ Hawkeye gave him, however, sent him scuttling backwards. Alphonse chuckled as he heard the man pick up the phone and start speaking.

“I know these sorts of things take time, but when do you suppose the Warrant Officer will be back?” Alphonse asked, looking over at Hawkeye, “I know he's probably happy with his double pay but if the weather down here is getting bad I can't imagine it's very nice where ever he's at.”

“He's probably buried up to his neck in a snow pile,” Breda snorted from his spot on top of the desk.

“We haven't had any communication in several weeks,” Hawkeye continued, “As I understand the weather is quite harsh so that could be a factor, but you're right. These things do take some time, and if it does end in a raid then it could be that we won't hear anything at all for a long while. Information blackouts aren't uncommon in operations like that, especially in the north with so much Drachman interference.”

“Right,” Alphonse said, shrugging loosely under his jacket. “I hope he's doing okay up there.”

Mustang reappeared in the doorway, a frown marring his face.

“That was Darius from the train station,” he started, and Al's eyes shot over to him, “He said the train is about to leave?”

“ _What_?” Al cried, snapping around to look at the clock. The hands read five past ten. “Oh no-- _Ihavetogogreattoseeyouguysbye_ \--!”

“Take the West Wing, fewer people to walk around,” Mustang suggested quickly, grabbing Al's bag off of Focke's desk and tossing it to him. Al caught it with one hand on his way out the door. “And be careful! _Call!_ ”

“I will; thanks; bye!”

Al disappeared around the door, footsteps clattering down the hallway. A few seconds later, there was the sound of creaking. Roy watched in both horror and fascination as cracks ate their way through the ceiling tiles, then the whole section crumbled out as Fuery fell completely through and landed sideways on Focke's desk, which promptly collapsed under the impact and sent paperwork, bits of tile, and dust flying everywhere. The light fixture hung precariously by several frayed wires.

Focke made a noise like a dying beached whale. Roy snorted. Hawkeye _sighed._

Someone else stuck their head into the office. This new person swiftly looked from the swinging light fixture to Fuery groaning on the floor, and then to Hawkeye.

“Did someone call for maintenance?”

After receiving a proper chewing out by Hawkeye, checking to insure that Fuery was uninjured from his fall, helping maintenance get their ladder set up and carrying in several new ceiling tiles (which thankfully maintenance had some on hand for 'occasions like this'), and doing some rearranging of desks, the office was back into some semblance of order.

Roy, for his part, watched the whole thing unfold under Hawkeye's irritated command, and didn't bother ordering anybody to assist Focke in picking up the scattered paperwork. He stood by, sipping at his coffee as Focke dusted bits of tile off of his work. It wasn't until a file slipped out from underneath a large chunk of the ceiling, releasing a multitude of photos across the floor, did Roy step forward.

“Ah,” he said, bending down to pick several of the photographs up. “It seems Alphonse left his evidence file.”

“Do you suppose he'll need it in Kessel, General?” Hawkeye asked, stepping over to help Focke gather the rest of the photos and the file. “We could call the train station to try and catch him...?”

“If he caught the train, it will be because he jumped on the back as it pulled out of the station,” Roy replied, turning the photos in his hands right side up. He gestured for the file and pictures that Hawkeye was holding and she handed them over, “When he calls, I'll inform him that he left it.”

Roy held out his hand, indicating for Focke to hand over the photos he was holding. Focke however, was squinting at the pictures of the tire tracks, turning them slightly to examine them.

“Where did Mister Elric get pictures of Drachman tire tracks?” he asked, flipping to the other picture he was holding, “They look like Utka SL carrier trucks.”

There was a long silence, then Focke looked up to find five pairs of eyes staring at him. Roy still had his hand outstretched, but now looked at Focke like he'd never quite seen him before.

“You know what tracks those belong to?” Roy asked, keeping his voice calm. He quietly reminded himself that Alphonse avoided Focke like the plague and likely had never shown him the photos he had taken. Roy had certainly never discussed details of the case with Focke, considering how badly he'd handled it when he was actually in charge.

“Maybe? It's an educated guess, General Mustang,” Focke said, clearly more than a little afraid that he'd drawn more ire down on himself, “I ran a raid when I was a second lieutenant in North City-- er, a second lieutenant the _first_ time. We were made to memorize certain Drachman tire tracks and vehicles during the operations. The way these tracks are set look like personnel trucks.”

Roy slowly looked up at Hawkeye, who looked back at Roy with the same, equally dumbfounded expression.

Drachman vehicles had been at every kidnapping scene.

Amestris was no stranger to Drachman terrorist cells, had certainly seen her fair share of the other country's attempts at clandestine activity. Roy had thought for certain that they had a handle on it though. Drachman activity tended to be concentrated in one small area at a time, and their focus was on destabilization of local government and spying on military. They were, generally speaking, easy enough to locate and neutralize once the threat was realized. Adding to the fact that Drachma itself always denied knowledge of any such activity and denounced any soldiers caught within Amestris as 'fringe groups', the current situation had always been the status quo.

…Until now.

All the kidnappings had taken place in various sections of the northern quarter, from Lodsenburg to Fletwocke and scattered in between. It would mean their network was larger and more sophisticated than previously thought, and that they had upped their game.

Would they dare kidnap State Alchemists? Roy considered this with a bit of wonderment and a sinking feeling. It was bold, even for a country willing to wheel heavy artillery up to the great wall of Briggs itself. That particular incident had been played off by Drachma at the time as the actions of an inept and power-hungry commander, and Grumman had let bygones be bygones once he had taken the seat, trying to quietly avoid full out war with the other country while Amestris was in disarray after Bradley's death.

Now though? Kidnapping State Alchemists and Amestrian citizens could very well spark a war--if they were caught at it.

More to the point, where were the kidnapped alchemists? Roy's eyes flickered to the map hanging on the wall as the sinking feeling turned to ice inside him. Were they being kept in a prison? What prison could hold a force like Edward Elric?

Was it possible they'd been smuggled into Drachma, absolutely beyond the reach of rescue?

Were they dead? Had Edward just been quietly executed behind closed doors? Had Alphonse been searching for an unmarked grave this whole time?

Roy forcibly derailed this train of thought. Alphonse was confident that his brother was alive, and since he'd been the one with his soul connected to Edward's life, Roy rather thought he was the expert.

“Alphonse would be on the train by now,” Hawkeye said quietly, almost a murmur. “...He won't be in Kessel until tomorrow morning. Unless you think this is enough to get the trains stopped?”

“Unless it directly leads us to the missing alchemists, unlikely,” Roy sighed, “I'll wait for his call. In the meantime--”

Roy pointed at Breda.

“First Lieutenant Breda, you finish cleaning this mess, and you--”

He swung his finger around to point at Focke.

“--My office. I want you to write down every possible truck you can identify and anything _else_ you notice in these photographs. _Now._ ”

Focke obeyed quickly, accepting the rest of the photographs and scurrying into the inner office. Roy caught Hawkeye's gaze, nodded, then followed after him. He clicked the door shut firmly behind them.

Hours passed, and the end of the workday was upon Roy soon enough. He had devoted his time to making some calls around the northern quarter after Focke was done going through the photos. He had identified one truck and was able to make several guesses at another other possible candidate for the other tracks at the State Alchemist scenes. He was certain that the tire make was Drachman though, and confirmed that the gas canister was also a common Drachman brand.

Focke wasn't able to say one way or the other for the syringes though, having never come across such a thing before. Roy hadn't said anything, opting to just let silence be his words. He didn't want to praise the man. If he'd _paid attention_ in the first place, his knowledge could have stopped a lot of trouble in its tracks. He was doing the job that he should have been doing before.

In the outside office, Roy heard the sounds of his staff quietly gathering up their stuff and leaving for the day. Breda and Havoc were having a discussion under low voices, which disappeared down the hall. Fuery bid Hawkeye and Black Hayate both farewells for the evening and was gone as well, and Roy overheard Hawkeye wishing Focke a good night several minutes later. There was the sound of paperwork being gathered up, then his door opened again.

“Roy,” Hawkeye said quietly, shutting the door behind her. In her arms was a large stack of paperwork, “We did as much as we could forging your name on everything without Focke noticing, but these are the things that really do need your attention. I also re-delegated the budget forms back to Brigadier General Stearman and told him to do his own paperwork and stop sending it to us.”

“Where would I be without my loyal team?” Roy joked, accepting the stack and wincing at the weight of it. He set the stack on the corner of the desk, then moved it in front of him when Hawkeye cut him a narrow look.

“Dead,” Hawkeye replied, “...Possibly even lying in the metaphorical ditch.”

“Ouch,” Roy murmured, watching as a smirk tugged the edge of Hawkeye's lips. He looked back down at the paperwork. “I made some calls around in North City. I recall that Alphonse found an abandoned road near where Fullmetal was taken. I managed to get a few men out to check for similar roads or paths around the rest of the crime scenes. If they can map them, connect them up to a main road, or find a common point for all them to meet, we might be able to deduce what route this particular Drachman cell is taking and where they're going.”

“And maybe where they're taking these people,” Hawkeye summed up. Her eyes were dark, and they glimmered with the barely suppressed anger of someone who'd had a friend stolen from her with no explanation. Roy could relate, although he privately hoped he wouldn't have to stop her from shooting nine hells out of a Drachman commander. Roy didn't think he'd survive the attempt.

“I just hope it's not to Drachma,” Roy sighed, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “...There would be very little we could do besides demand them back. Alphonse might be able to slip across the border and pull some Elric-esque magic, but if he's caught he'd be no better off than Edward. I write him in as a 'civilian consult' on paper to justify his presence at the crime scenes but I doubt that would provide him with protection anywhere else. Your grandfather might be very hesitant to even accuse Drachma of anything based solely on our proof of tire tracks.”

“My grandfather can be reasoned with,” Hawkeye replied loftily, “I am his favorite granddaughter, after all.”

“...Is this some form of reverse nepotism I'm hearing?” Roy murmured, letting his own smirk curl his lips, “How _scandalous_. Before you maneuver the Fuhrer into declaring war against Drachma, let's figure out if they're even there first.”

“And you have paperwork to finish,” Hawkeye reached out and tapped the stack in front of Roy. “ _Tonight_.”

“I suppose I'm lucky it's such a small stack,” Roy replied, leaning forward in his seat. “I may actually get off work in time for a decent night's sleep.”

He flipped open the first file and frowned.

“These are requisition and property use forms,” he said slowly, looking up in time to catch the smirk that Hawkeye threw at him over her shoulder on her way out, “These don't take signatures, I have to write literal essays. These take _forever_ , Riza,”

“You're a general, General; it's your job to determine where the military should be spending money,” she positively _sauntered_ out of the office, and Roy glared after her. “I'll see you in the morning, Roy.”

“Right,” Roy groused, picking up the nearest pen. If he got started quickly enough, he'd make it home by midnight at least. He listened as Hawkeye closed up shop in the outer office. He heard the sound of the newly fixed overhead lights being clicked off and the lamp on the corner of Hawkeye's desk turning on. Pens were rattled into a drawer and, her footsteps light across the wooden floorboards, Roy finally heard the door click shut and lock behind her as she left.

Roy slipped his gloves on. With Hawkeye in the office, he rarely bothered with them-- she'd put bullet holes in any intruder brave enough to accost the Flame Alchemist in the seat of his power. Without her and the rest of his men, however, one could never be too careful, and Roy hadn't played around enough with his ability to transmute without a circle to trust it in an emergency. In fact, aside from what alchemy he'd done on the Promised Day, the only array-less alchemy he'd attempted was to fix the squeaky staircase in his house. He'd only managed to somehow turn half his staircase into splinters. Embarrassing enough, but Roy knew so little about fixing things with alchemy that, for two days while he'd researched how to put it all back together, the only access he'd had to his bedroom was climbing a ladder into his window.

Roy was just glad that Alphonse had been up north at the time. He wasn't entirely sure he could've lived the humiliation down otherwise, and Al was none the wiser except for a small side comment on Roy's newly designed banister.

Roy shook those thoughts away, looking down at his first thick file. It was an approval-pending requisition order for ceiling tiles, Roy noted with some sardonic humor, and a decision to be made between ¾ of an inch thick tiles or ½ of an inch thick. He huffed a deep, agonized sigh and began writing.

It was several hours later when Roy finally finished a particularly frustrating invoice dealing with bathroom pipes. Last of the files completed, Roy jotted his signature with a final flourish and put it in his outbox, then leaned back slowly. His back popped twice and he cringed, then slipped his glasses off his face. Marcoh had warned him, while healing his eyes, that they could be sensitive to being strained, and he'd be prone to headaches. He didn't have one now, but Roy certainly felt _tired._

Was this old age sneaking up on him, Roy wondered? He was just barely into his thirties and he already had the nightly ritual of plucking new grey hairs from his temples. When Edward came home, he was going to kill the younger man for putting them there in the first place.

Roy paused in this thought. He'd always thought of Edward as a kid, or a brat. How old would Edward be now?

He was sixteen when he'd disappeared, on the cusp of seventeen. Al had spent Edward's seventeenth birthday hunting for him up north. He'd spent Edward's eighteenth at the bar, getting so drunk that eventually Madame Christmas was obligated to call Roy to come pick him up.

So eighteen. Edward would be an adult. They would have to make up for time lost then, Roy decided. They would have a party, and they'd get Edward so embarrassingly sloshed that Roy could tell him the story about the staircase and be comfortable with the fact that Ed wouldn't remember a word of it. Edward, who hadn't gotten a break for most of his life, deserved some down time with friends, and Roy had always enjoyed seeing him genuinely happy in those rare times he got to experience it.

Maybe they could take another car ride, Roy thought, looking at his fingers studiously. He rather missed those. They'd started when Edward was younger, when Roy could see the shadows building behind bright yellow eyes. Roy had recognized that look, sometimes saw it staring back at him in the mirror every morning while he brushed his teeth. Determined not to watch Edward turn into himself, Roy had marched into the dorm one evening, told Alphonse he needed Edward for a classified mission (Al, perceptive even as a child, had noted Roy's lack of uniform at the time), and then just drove Edward around the city for several hours, getting him to talk, getting him to open up about all the shit that was building up and _hurting_ too deep to talk about with Al-- who was a year younger and every bit as scared as his brother.

All the things that would eventually break him, if left to fester. Roy refused to permit the same rot that wrecked his own soul to grow inside Edward.

The car rides had continued, up until Ed was AWOL anyway, throughout the years. They'd been an excuse at first for Edward to let out his frustrations and fears, but as he grew up their conversations eventually meandered. Edward had surprised him then-- he'd always seemed to have a one track mind and a singular love for alchemy. Alchemy, though, was a holistic study in nature, and Ed had proven to be intelligent in a wide variety of things.

Eventually too, Edward proved keenly observant, and one day pointed out that Roy was picking him up when he himself was having a bad day too.

Roy hadn't noticed when Edward had become a friend he could vent with.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve. Roy looked up from his gloved hands, wincing as his neck ached in response. Filing his thoughts away for later examination, Roy slipped his glasses into their small cloth case and tucked them into his pocket. Standing, Roy pulled the chain on his lamp and gathered his briefcase-- mostly empty, for once, and not stuffed to the brim with 'homework'-- and went to fetch his jacket from the coat stand by the door.

He had one arm in his sleeve when the phone on the desk rang. Roy froze and gave the phone a considering look.

It could wait, couldn't it? Al wouldn't be in Kessel yet so it couldn't be him. Likelihood was it some other poor sod also working late and was looking for some errant paperwork-- maybe even for something that Roy had just put into his outbox.

The phone rang again. Roy worked his other arm into his sleeve, still staring at the phone like it was some kind of snake that may or may not bite him. Finally, after another few moments of indecision, then deciding that the risk of something being wrong wasn't worth the attempt of avoiding paperwork, Roy went back to the desk and picked up the phone. One of the very best things about being a general meant he very rarely had to worry about his tone when he answered the phone. The likelihood of someone outranking him on the phone was nearly one percent.

“I was just leaving, so if you're calling about not receiving the possibly approved invoice for bathroom piping, I'm positively certain you can wait until morning.”

“. _..General Mustang, sir_?”

Roy paused.

“Vato?” he asked, tilting his head as there was a burst of static in his ear. That was a northern phone line all right. “This is a surprise. We haven't heard from you in a while. What are you doi--”

“ _Sir, I hate to interrupt, but I may not have a lot of time to explain._ ”

Falman's voice was rushed and quiet, and Roy remained silent to allow him to continue.

His next words blindsided Roy, stunned him and made him freeze in place, knuckles whitening around the handle of the phone. His stomach twisted with dread at the same time that his heart attempted to escape his rib cage, swelled as it was with hope after a long year and a half of silence and dead ends.

“ _I think I know where Major Elric is at, sir_.”

* * *

 

 

“We're here in Kessel now, General. Pretty uneventful journey, and I'm already starting to regret coming up here.”

Alphonse shivered as he tucked his jacket tighter around himself. The weather was awful that particular day-- the sky overhead was a muddy gray and thunder rolled threateningly, punctuated only by the sound of pouring rain. Sheets of icy cold water sluiced down on the phone box. Huddled under the nearest eaves, Darius and Heinkel repeatedly made 'hurry it up' hand gestures to him, clearly eager to get somewhere warm.

“ _Yes, I've heard the weather up north is fairly aggressive right now,_ ” Mustang replied, voice oddly quiet. It was his 'something's going on but I don't want to alarm you' voice, one that Al particularly detested because it usually meant something was being hidden from him. “ _Be thankful you're not where Warrant Officer Falman is right now. As I understand, he is nearly up to his waist in snow_.”

Al paused.

“You heard from him then?”

“ _...Yes, last night in fact. It was late when he called,_ ” Mustang's voice became a bit warmer then. “ _...He was quite upset about the weather but also mentioned your gloves are doing him a solid bit of good. I believe he noticed the warming array sewn on the insides.”_

“Ah,” Alphonse laughed, cutting a glance over his shoulder again. Darius was scowling quite impressively at him. Al wiped fog off the glass. “I suppose that's why you sound so cagey with me today.”

There was a quick pause.

“ _Do I? I don't intend to_ ,” Mustang replied, tone lighter now. Al snorted. “ _The matter is some important details on the Warrant Officer's case were discussed. A few things have been resolved... while others have gotten worse_.”

“So he's stuck at an undisclosed location for an indeterminate amount of time doing classified activities not to be discussed still?”

“ _Precisely_.”

“That sucks,” Alphonse tapped the glass. Heinkel was giving him a _look_ now so Al figured it was time to stop pushing his luck before one or both of the chimera went and cut the phone line in protest. “Also, I may have left a file sitting on Lieutenant Focke's desk? I ran out in such a hurry yesterday--”

“ _Yes, we found it_ ,” Mustang replied, “ _Kain may have obliterated Focke's desk by falling on it yesterday, but we were able to gather up the photos. Do you want me to mail it to you, or would you prefer I hang on to it?_ ”

“...I'd hate for it to get lost trying to find me,” Alphonse said after a moment's thought, “Go ahead and keep it. I don't know how long I'll be here anyway-- this lead was sort of a long shot, to be honest.”

“ _Alright. Get some shelter. I can hear the rain from here._ ”

Al snorted again. A large, looming shadow fell over him. Looking up, he smiled at both Darius and Heinkel's unimpressed faces pushed against the glass.

“Yes sir, General Mustang.”

The two exchanged goodbyes, then Alphonse hung up and leaned out of the phone booth.

“Ready to go look around?” he asked innocently, “The lead said Brother was sighted around the train station so we shouldn't have to go far.”

“Tomorrow,” Darius growled, “It's _pouring_.”

“We're going to a hotel and we're not coming out until it's done with this rain,” Heinkel rumbled, “I've already done my fair share of camping out in my lifetime.”

“Well uh,” Al reached up to rub the back of his head, laughing a bit nervously. “I hope you're ready to pitch tent, because there's not a hotel in town.”

Darius and Heinkel, who had been turning to walk away, both whipped around to look back at him. Alphonse smiled sweetly at the two.

“Should I have mentioned this earlier?”

* * *

 

 

Hawkeye was giving Roy a narrow look as he hung up the phone.

“He's not going to thank you for withholding information,” she said crisply, “In fact, if he doesn't outright deck you when he finds out, I'm going to be absolutely shocked.”

“Alphonse isn't military. He's not technically privy to any of this information, regardless of who his brother is,” Roy said, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes. After getting off the phone with Vato, he'd called his entire staff back to the office, and they'd been there all night, going over information, making phone calls, and pulling favors. Coffee cups were littered everywhere, and Roy had even helped himself to a little bit of the brandy he'd had hidden in his bookshelf.

“I'm not going to stop him from hitting you, sir.”

“I don't think he's going to hit me,” Roy said quietly, “...I've lived with him for a year and a half now. He's going to poison me when he finds out, and while I'm choking on my own foamy spit on my kitchen floor, flailing about in my death throes, he will lean over me so that I know to my very grave that he was the one that did it.”

“Appropriately dramatic.”

Roy pulled his hands away from his eyes. It had been two years since Marcoh had healed his eyes, and Roy had no intention of damaging them now.

“Your grandfather was also very firm with me when I went to visit him,” he said, side-eyeing the bottle that he'd pulled out. He quietly wondered how much more he could drink and get away with before the work day got cranking. “Fuhrer Grumman made a point of informing me that no 'civilian consults' get to ride shotgun this time. This isn't a crime scene-- it could escalate into an actual firefight. Telling Alphonse we may have his brother's location will send him running straight into danger.”

“Alphonse can handle himself,” Hawkeye pointed out, “...He's an alchemist too, and every bit as skilled as Edward is.”

“I know, but it can't be helped,” Roy murmured, lacing his fingers together over his mouth. “...Getting the Fuhrer to even agree to us going up north was a hassle. I had to make concessions.”

He leaned back in his chair, resting his elbows on his stomach, as he thought about _that_ particular meeting.

“ _Generals don't usually ride into battles with their men,” Grumman muttered, looking rather cranky at being pulled out of bed so early. His already wild hair seemed to be trying to escape his head entirely and he appeared to be using his coffee spoon as a shovel for the sugar bowl. “They're important, General Mustang. They stay behind the lines and command.”_

“ _I understand, sir,” Roy replied, “But sometimes they do to bolster their men, or they go if the cause is great enough.”_

“ _And Major Elric is a great enough cause?”_

“ _He's a national hero, sir,” Roy pointed out. “A symbol of hope for the people. And you've made a lot of promises to the people. Finding him alive would be a boon for the military and for Amestris as a whole-- and if all the evidence is correct, a blow to Drachma if they've failed to transport him across the border.”_

_Grumman didn't reply, holding his coffee up to his nose._

“ _...Just this once, sir.”_

_There it was. Roy was pinning all of his hope on this. If Edward or any of the State Alchemists weren't at the facility described by Vato over the phone, Roy would've blown his one chance to at least be the one out in the field, to be the one coordinating and insuring the rescue mission went off without a hitch. Sure, he could send his men out-- but he would be as a general, waiting for their return._

_Grumman hummed softly under his breath._

“ _Very well,” he murmured, “I'll take you at that. You'll take care of your own transport and equipment-- you and your men; that's it. I'll ensure Major Bloche knows to expect you, although I have the suspicion that he won't be altogether happy about it.”_

And Bloche _hadn't_ been. Barely a minute after Roy had sat down at his desk after the meeting with Grumman, Bloche had called up. He was polite, he said his 'yes, sirs' and 'no, sirs' but Roy could hear the hard, irritated edge in his voice. He was there to stop Drachman clandestine operations. Roy was there to find missing people. Their two cases had been merged, and there was going to be some chafing when it came to handling things.

No matter, Roy decided. He could handle a grumpy Major. In fact, he had a great deal of experience in doing so.

“Hey Boss?”

Roy looked up at Havoc, who had rolled his office chair through the door like a twelve-year-old instead of a full grown man. Havoc blew out a massive puff of smoke, looking at the papers in his hands.

“Trains aren't running to North City. The weather's gotten too bad-- everything further north is shut down,” he explained, “I secured us a truck from the motor pool though. It won't be a cozy ride up there, but it's a ride.”

Breda stuck his head around the doorjamb. Focke stood awkwardly beside him.

“Focke and I talked to a friend at the outpost in Smaswell,” he said cheerfully, “They've got northern gear waiting for us on our way in.”

Fuery elbowed his way into the door. His uniform top was missing, button-up sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like he'd worked up a sweat, for all it was twenty degrees outside.

“I've got radio gear and the supplies, sir,” he explained, straightening his glasses on his face after fussing his way into the room. “It's all loaded up and ready for us. It'll take us at least a night or so to get to the outpost, depending on how the truck handles the weather, and we'll get up to Fickwarren to meet up with the Warrant Officer within two days.”

“I wouldn't trade any of you for the world,” Roy said warmly, then paused. “Except for you, Focke. No offense.”

“None taken, sir,” Focke said tiredly, “Am I going with, or am I holding down the office?”

Roy laughed ominously. Focke gave him an alarmed look.

“Oh, no slacking off for you,” he replied, “This started on your watch. You're going to see it through to the very end before you ever see your office again. If we're going to be freezing up north, you're going to be shivering right next to us.”

“...Of course, sir...”

“Brigadier General Stearman is kindly taking care of all paperwork until we return,” Hawkeye said at Roy's right. The tone in her voice indicated that it hadn't been nearly as 'kindly' as she'd liked. Roy reminded himself to drop in on Stearman when they returned. Regardless of rank, he didn't like other officers abusing his staff. “Everything's been delegated properly.”

“Sir?”

Roy looked back at Fuery. The younger man-- the first to arrive on Roy's call, bright-eyed and ready even before Hawkeye came in-- was looking at him with something that bordered dangerously between hope and the dark well of despair, a tightrope walk that depended entirely on their success. Roy knew that feeling-- everyone standing there knew that feeling. He could see it, crystallized perfectly in everyone's eyes.

“Is-- is this a real thing, sir?” he asked, then considered his words. “I mean, is there a real chance? There were a lot of wild goose chases in the beginning, and a lot of... nothings. A lot of let downs. Is Vato really sure about this?”

“ _I'm not about to get yanked around again, am I?” Roy asked quietly, holding the phone close to his mouth, “Everybody here. It's been one dead end after another with Alphonse. I don't think anybody can afford to get going like this and have their hearts broken again. I can't tell Alphonse we have him and come home empty-handed.”_

_There was a rush of static, so long that Roy worried they'd lost connection-- that he wouldn't get an answer. After a few moments though, Vato coughed._

“ _The papers I found in the raid mention Major Elric by name, along with the other missing State Alchemists,” he said quietly, “...They mention transporting them to a facility just a few miles up from here, sir. There's also... supply lists, and drop offs, and intel here. It's a whole business. The captured soldiers we've got mentioned them by name too, and wouldn't confirm that they'd been moved to Drachma. Their whole supply line's been cut because of the weather, so if we're going in, it's probably best to do it as soon as possible before they realize we're on to them and they really do try and get the alchemists across the border.”_

_Roy waited._

“ _...I... reading through these papers, sir, it really sounds like...” Vato hesitated. “It sounds like the real deal. I wouldn't walk through a snow storm to reach a phone in the middle of the night and break an information blackout for nothing, sir.”_

_Roy... couldn't argue that point. He breathed very deeply through his nose for several seconds, trying to calm the tension running through the tendons in his hands. He was gripping the phone and the back of the chair so tight it felt like his knuckles were about to break._

“ _Alright,” he said quietly, “We'll see you there, Warrant Officer.”_

“Vato was certain of it,” Roy said quietly, standing behind his desk, “He found Fullmetal mentioned by name in the documents seized in the raid. Their next raid is going to be on the facility before the weather calms down, which is why we're leaving _right now_. Does everybody have their affairs in order?”

In spite of the fear, in spite of having one hope after another crushed underfoot so many times before, his men looked at him like a single star burning in the sky.

“...Then let's go fetch Fullmetal.”

* * *

 

Alphonse was damp, cold, kind of grimy, and pretty tired. As he picked at a loose seam on his jacket and grimaced at the smell of rain in his clothes, he wondered how on earth his brother had managed to live like this for nearly five years. Granted, he wouldn't ask for the armor back if someone held a gun to his head-- especially considering what the _cost_ had been--  
  
\--Al derailed this thought. He couldn't afford to think about it right now. He stretched, looking back behind him. He had managed to transmute out two tents for him and his entourage for the night, although the two chimera in the bigger tent still looked quite unhappy with him. Heinkel was trying to tame a horrible case of tent hair and Darius just looked angry at everything, including the dew on the grass.  
  
And there had been nothing to their lead. The sighting of Edward had turned out to be little more than an overly nosey townswoman who rather thought her new reclusive neighbor looked a lot like that 'young man in the newspaper'.  
  
It was just a guy who liked to wear a red peacoat and rarely came out during the day. He hadn't looked much like his brother at all, Alphonse considered sadly. He looked up at the gray sky with a sigh.  
  
At the very least, it wasn't raining anymore.  
  
“I think we got further when we went to Lodsenburg,” he said quietly, “This has just been one misstep after the other since then. I don't think we should do sightings anymore; Brother's being kept _somewhere_ and I don't think they'd be letting him just walk around.”  
  
Finishing smoothing his hair back, Heinkel gave Al a long look. After a minute, he crossed his arms.  
  
“While you were talking to the old woman, I went around town a bit,” he said quietly, “They have a bulletin board up in the square with notices and news, things like that. There's two missing persons posters up and they're both in Mardon.”  
  
“Mardon's about fifteen miles from here,” Al said after a few minutes. “Did it say anything else?”  
  
“They both went missing two days ago,” Heinkel replied, leaning against the wall of the train station. “It said the guy is an alchemist, but the girl isn't. Or at least it doesn't say she is. Might be completely unrelated, might not be.”  
  
“Might not be,” Alphonse repeated under his breath. There was the rub, wasn't it? Any of their tips and leads could be something. It was always hard, leaving some possible leads out and following the more likely-seeming ones, because there was always the niggling little fear in the back of his head that maybe it wasn't just a nosy neighbor this time, maybe that one little tip was the right one, and he was ignoring it.  
  
Maybe he'd completely missed his brother at some point, had walked right past the house that Edward was being kept prisoner in? Alphonse had heard of things like that happening, how police would knock on the very door of the home that a kidnap victim was being held in-- would never have guessed that the face that answered the door was a cruel and vicious person in reality.  
  
What if he had already done that? What if he'd taken tea with the person who was keeping his brother prisoner? Worse, what if he'd already found his brother, but not in the way he'd wanted-- what if he'd walked right on top of Edward's unmarked grave and hadn't even realized it?  
  
“Let me call the General,” Al said quietly, trying to pull himself out of these melancholic thoughts with the new hope of Mardon. “If these are new missing alchemists, he might want to know about it before I go snooping around.”  
  
Heinkel nodded at him, fixing his glasses on his nose. Darius grunted as he kicked at the dew on the ground, leaving dark spots in the field of crystalline white grass. Alphonse turned and climbed up onto the train platform. The payphone stood empty, a train timetable hanging loosely on the wall next to it. Al eyed it critically. Mardon was about the same size as Lodsenburg and had about as many visitors, but the morning train that was due soon was indeed stopping there. 

Alphonse dropped some cenz into the phone, dialed Mustang's office number, and waited. The phone rang for several long minutes-- strange enough, because if not Mustang, then Hawkeye was exceedingly prompt with picking up the phone. After a few more minutes, however, the line went quiet. Al pulled the phone back and stared at it, then turned to look at the clock hanging on the station wall.  
  
Well. Everyone should be in their proper places. Maybe Mustang had taken a day? Al took his returned change and pushed them back into the coin slot. He dialed Mustang's house and waited-- then nothing.   
  
Huh. Alphonse returned his coins and dialed the next number on his list, which was Hawkeye's number. He wasn't entirely sure if he was  _supposed_ to know everyone's numbers, but Edward had had them all memorized for some reason or another, so Alphonse had thought it prudent that he knew them as well. He went through the list-- getting an apology from the dorm room attendant because Fuery wasn't in.

Al eventually conceded the battle and hung the phone up. He hoped everyone was okay. Mustang hadn't given him exact details on the phone about Falman's situation in the north, just that the situation had changed slightly. Al hadn't pushed for details either because he knew well enough he wasn't exactly obligated to know. He rather hoped nothing _terrible_  had happened-- or that Amestris and Drachma had finally thrown their gloves down and had gone to war while he'd slept. He hoped that was the case-- partially because war did terrible things to good people and Amestris couldn't really handle it right now, even two years after the Promised Day, and because it would make the north an absolute battleground. 

The northern quarter of Amestris was hard enough to traverse without worrying about becoming a casualty.

"Anything?" 

Heinkel and Darius had appeared behind him, both looking a bit more presentable and slightly less grumpy. Alphonse hung the phone back on the hook and returned his change to his pocket. 

"By anything, did you mean 'Did the General have anything for us?" or did you mean "Does anybody in Central City pick up their phone?" because the answer to both of those questions is a firm  _no_." Alphonse sighed. "I hate to go anywhere without letting him know, especially since the money in my wallet is his."

"We have to go to the Town Hall to buy a ticket," Darius muttered, speaking for the first time since Alphonse had greeted him with a "Good morning, sunshine!" earlier. "...If we hoof it, and avoid small talk with anybody, we can make it there and back and catch the train."

"You can try calling when we reach Mardon," Heinkel suggested, "Maybe all of Central City will have their phones connected when we get there."

Al flicked him a narrow look, then considered the idea. Mustang wasn't really picking up the phone, and if he called at Mardon station, it wasn't like he'd gotten into trouble  _yet_. After a few moments, he nodded. 

"Alright, let's go."

* * *

 

 

Roy knew he was pushing his luck. He'd gone two days without sleep, had barely eaten, and now his thoughts were scattered and nervous even as he maintained a cool visage. He had pushed and harried his men and Bloche's, and now here they were.

As if sensing his thoughts, the truck hit a pothole, bouncing hard enough to make a few of the soldiers inside the carrier to shift uncomfortably in place. The last pothole they hit had flattened a tire, and delayed them from their destination by over an hour. Roy didn't want any more delays like that-- he wasn't sure they could afford it.

At his left, Havoc leaned forward, mouth turned down around his cigarette. The shadows under his eyes were even darker in the soft glow of the lantern light. Outside the canvas curtain, Roy could see thick clumps of snow whirling by in the dark, disappearing into the headlights of the truck behind him.

Roy frowned.

With a gloved hand, he reached up and knocked on the window. In the passenger seat of the front of the truck, Fuery slid the window open. A burst of warm air curled in the air around the window and Roy was suddenly insanely jealous of his radio operator.

“Tell Lieutenant Jameson if he wants to keep his rank, this is the last time I'm telling him to turn his headlights out,” he said harshly, “If I look back one more time and I see him endangering these men and this operation, we're pulling over and leaving him on the roadside and I'll write him up when we return to Central.”

“Will we be picking him back up, sir?”

“Depends on my mood.”

“Yes sir,” Fuery said quietly, reaching up and sliding the window shut again. Roy could see him fiddling with the radio, but paid little more attention. He had no doubt that Fuery would repeat his order word for word. A few seconds later, the headlights behind him flicked off, leaving the line of trucks in total darkness again.

Privately, Roy hoped that there were no sentries near the road. They had caught two Drachman soldiers at the outpost between Fickwarren and the abandoned mining town they were headed toward. They didn't seem to know that the Fickwarren post had been raided, and they had been excruciatingly low on supplies as well. None of their radio transcripts, according to Vato, had indicated recent communication with the facility they were headed toward.

Roy looked back at Havoc again. The man was looking at the map of the mining town. Hawkeye and several men were far ahead of them, having gone on foot under cover of dark, and they'd managed to get a balloon in the air to take pictures of the town and draw out a map. It was small, barely a few buildings left standing after being abandoned for well over three decades. Even old mining equipment, completely rusted through and useless, was left sitting where they had last been used. What was the most interesting to Roy was the headframe over the mine shaft, and the apparently brand new lift that had been built over the yawning cavern of the shaft. A Drachman truck sat nearby, almost-but-not-quite hidden from view by the massive piles of snow that had heaped up around the buildings.

The facility was _underground_.

It was no wonder it had escaped being noticed for so long. Anybody looking at the town that wasn't explicitly looking for a hidden Drachman facility would have assumed the lift was part of the mining equipment, wouldn't have seen the truck for what it was. As it was, they couldn't enter the facility through the lift and expect to survive, especially since any blueprints of the mine shaft were long gone and they had no idea the layout of the building. What should have taken a mere day or so to plan took nearly three as Roy and Major Bloche ordered men around the surrounding area, looking for any kind of tunnel that could act as an escape route from the nearby mine.

Thankfully, the strong weather and long northern nights masked most of their activities.

They'd found a tunnel, of course, and some careful searching revealed that it wasn't guarded. It lead into the open hillside, straight to a wide concrete portal, and was big enough to let trucks through. 

Good or bad news? Roy wasn't sure. It could mean that the Drachmans inside had gotten complacent and weren't taking precautions.

It could mean they'd all escaped. Roy felt his insides growing as cold as the air around him at this thought. If they'd left, it meant that they could have taken the kidnapped alchemists with them. Or it meant they abandoned the alchemists, leaving them to die.

Roy felt the truck leave the road, wheels turning up rock and gravel beneath them. The soldiers inside the truck began to shuffle, straightening the gear and preparing. Roy glanced around him-- these were all men trained to fight in northern conditions and to perform successful raids. If anybody was in the way here, it was himself and his men-- but he had no doubt of the skill of his staff to adapt. He himself would be using a gun, especially with no knowledge of the layout of the facility. Roy was deadly accurate and fast, but there was just no good way of using fire in narrow hallways without collateral damage.

The trucks rolled to a stop. Roy watched as the soldiers ahead of them climbed out the back of the canvassed truck two by two, until it got to him, Havoc, and Breda. Fuery was up front with the radio, Falman and Focke were in the other truck with Bloche, and Hawkeye had taken the two best shooters from Bloche's men and had found spots overlooking the town, hidden away in the old mining equipment, just in case of anyone escaping via the lift.

The rest of the soldiers got off the truck. Roy could hear Bloche doing a final brief. He looked back at Havoc and Breda.

"There's evidence that Fullmetal was brought here," he said quietly, "Pretty strong evidence. But I don't want-- I would rather you be prepared. Just in case. It's been a year and a half now, and there's no guarantee he's still alive. I want you prepared for the worst."

"We're fine, General," Breda said, just as quiet, "We-- I think we've all been sitting with that on our minds. Whatever comes to pass now-- well. At least we'll know, right?"

Roy nodded, then looked at Havoc. The man was silent, still looking rather drawn. Roy considered this-- he hadn't paid particularly close attention to how Edward got along with the rest of his staff over the years, but he'd occasionally seen Edward and Havoc together during Havoc's physical therapy, and once he'd seen the two of them jogging together in sweats. More than once when Edward had been an unruly brat he'd seen Havoc pulling Ed aside to talk to him, but had never quite gotten around to asking about it. Maybe he'd been chastising Ed, but Roy suspected more than anything that Havoc had played the role of older brother more often than he would ever admit.

That was good. Edward had always been the older, stronger rock for Alphonse. It was good that he'd had someone to look to for himself. Now though, Roy could see that this was a point of torment for the other man. 

'Lieutenant?" he asked quietly, and Havoc-- with sharp, deliberate movements, folded his copy of the map up and tucked it away.

"At least we'll get some closure," Havoc grunted, putting out his cigarette and stashing it in his front pocket. He shifted his gear to the ready. "Like Heymans said. At least we'll know."

The canvas curtain was pulled back. Bloche squinted into the truck, looking between the tree before his gaze settled on Roy. He looked irritated, but rank still meant something, even up in the blistering cold of the north. 

"Sir?" he asked, "Are we ready?"

"Yes, Major," Roy replied, tuning out the quiet, reassuring voice he'd taken with Havoc and Breda and reining in the cocky, confident tone of a natural born leader. He smirked for good measure. "We're ready if you are."

Everyone was in the tunnel by the time Roy, Havoc, and Breda got in there. They hugged the walls, guns drawn and waiting in front of the concrete portal. The sliding metal door was locked with a chain and padlock-- no match to the heavy duty boltcutters that Bloche carried. Havoc and Breda joined Falman and Focke off to the side. Roy followed Bloche, heart pounding. This was the moment of truth-- were there guards inside, standing at the ready to fire on them? Roy took hold of the large steel handle of the door, watching as Bloche snapped the chain with a harsh ringing sound that reverberated off the carved walls of the tunnel. Roy side-eyed the earth around them for a moment, trying to work out why they seemed so strange to him. he couldn't dwell though, not when Bloche was holding up his fingers and counting down silently.

_3, 2, 1--_

Roy pulled the door with all his strength, cringing at the screech of metal on metal as it ground open. There was a moment of silence before the rest of the soldiers filed in fast, weapons drawn. Roy peered around the door and found himself staring at an empty space, devoid of guards or soldiers alike. Tire tracks on the ground indicated that trucks had been in here, and were now gone.

Roy's heart sank at the sight. He studiously put the feeling away though, drawing his gun as the men cleared the room and headed to the door that sat above them on a metal stairway. The carved walls of the earth around him still called Roy's attention, but Bloche was kicking the door in and the soldiers were filing into the facility quickly. 

Roy was met with white walls, smooth concrete and too-bright overhead lights. He squinted against it at first, falling back behind the soldiers that were still sporting their snow goggles until his vision adjusted. The lights meant electricity was still on, which Roy counted as a good sign-- or a sign that there was a back-up generator hard at work. The hallways were narrow like he'd suspected they would be, and could barely contain the amount of men around him. Roy was glad when they came to a fork in the path. A windowed-in space was there and an open barred gate. Going through the gate lead to another featureless hallway. The other direction lead to several doorways. Bloche directed a large group of the soldiers, including Havoc and Focke, towards the other side and lead the rest of them through the open gate. 

The place smelled... sterile. Antiseptic. Like a hospital, Roy thought after a few moments. This thought lodged in his brain and wouldn't quite...  _settle,_ making him queasy as they turned a few corners and--

\--face to face with two Drachman soldiers. Shouts immediately filled the hall as the men in front held up their guns, ordering the two soldiers on to the ground. With barely a moment's indecision-- considering the force they were facing down-- the two men laid face-down with their hands up. They were immediately swarmed, disarmed, and handcuffed.

Roy breathed a slow sigh of relief that a fire fight hadn't broken out in the narrow little hall. They needed to find an open, central space to set up shop. 

As if sensing his thoughts, Falman came forward as the men were hauled up against the wall. He spoke in slightly-stilted Drachma, repeating the questions Bloche was asking over his shoulder. The lankier of the two Drachmans spoke nervously, looking from Falman to Bloche, and then-- curiously enough-- to Roy. His expression was that of recognition, Roy realized after a few moments. 

Well. They  _were_ taking State Alchemists. It would only be natural for Roy to be on the list too. The thought of it made his blood run cold.

"He says the barracks are right down the hall in the center," Falman said finally, "He said there's still eight more soldiers, but no officers. When the supplies from Drachma stopped coming because of the weather, the officers in charge and most of the footsoldiers left. This is a skeleton crew to keep the place running on the bare minimum."

Falman paused, his mouth turning oddly. It was confusion on his normally unreadable face.

"He also said there's two... orderlies? Nurses? That's hard to translate properly, but they're not armed. They're here to take care of the prisoners."

Roy looked up sharp at that, meeting Bloche's eyes. The major turned to look at Falman and said something quietly. Falman translated, and the captured soldier spoke. Falman raised his head and translated again.

"He said the prisoners are here, sir. They're on this floor."

Roy's heart  _swelled_ with that. He tried to dampen it, tried to quickly crush it underfoot with the words  _he could still be dead, he could be dead_ rushing around in the section of his brain that actually used logic, but it was his first strong, real hope he'd had since this started. With quick, pointed instructions, two men stayed back with the captured soldiers and the group moved forward again. Roy supposed by now the outside tunnel and entryway were absolutely swarmed with Amestrian soldiers; with only ten men on the Drachman side of things-- if that wasn't a lie-- there wasn't going to be much of a fight. 

They turned a corner and Roy was greeted by rows of doors. Clipboards hung by each one. Each door had a strange lock on the front of it, and a gap between door and floor. Several folded up wheelchairs sat against the wall at the end of the hallway. Falman reached out and started reading the clipboard.

"It says Subject 12, General," Falman called back to Roy, who holstered his gun and edged his way through the crowded hall, "Ian Northrup, sir."

"That's the Recoil Alchemist. He was one of the first to go missing," Roy stated, turning his attention to the lock. It only took a moment to figure out; he pulled the concrete door forward, then turned the horizontal handle vertically to unlock the heavy metal bolt inside. Concrete ground and crunched loudly on its steel tracks as Roy pulled the door open.

Absolute silence descended over the men as the scene revealed itself. The cell inside was small-- barely long enough to lie down in-- and it was padded top to bottom like an asylum. A small form, wearing a straitjacket and draped in chains, was huddled up in the corner, face buried against his knees as he rocked back and forth in a rhythmic fashion.

How long had Northrup been here, now? Two years? Two and a half? That spelled good news for Edward's survival, but what about his mental state? Roy stepped carefully into the cell, walking gingerly over the padding to the man trying desperately to hide himself in the corner. As carefully and non-threateningly as Roy could, he knelt down beside Northrup. He was excruciatingly thin, and his eyes were squeezed shut. Small, shuddering sobs wracked his frame inside the straitjacket. He seemed to be trying to stay as quiet as possible.

"Major Northrup?" Roy tried quietly, aware of the eyes on him. Northrup seemed to only shrink away further. "Ian Northrup? My name's Roy Mustang. Can you look at me for just a moment?"

Northrup shivered. 

"Just for a moment, Major."

Silence. Northrup continued to rock back and forth, not acknowledging Roy. After about a minute, Roy turned to look back at where Bloche was standing in the door. The man looked deeply disturbed, though none of it showed in his voice as he spoke.

"Is there going to be a prisoner in each of these cells?" he asked after looking away from Northrup and meeting Roy's eyes. Roy grimaced.

"...There's a _minimum_ of fourteen missing alchemists," he replied quietly, "...So very likely, yes."

Bloche nodded, looked at the rocking Northrup, then looked back at his men.

"Evans, go back out and get the medics. All of them. These people need help. The rest of you find the barracks and finish securing this floor."

When there was no movement-- when men were still frozen solid at the sight of Northrup, Bloche stamped one foot on the concrete.

" _NOW!_ "

There was a flurry of movement then. Roy waited until the space outside was cleared before he stood and started to leave Northrup's side. His gaze was drawn- very briefly- down to the man's bare legs. Strange, double pointed marks were burned and scarred into his skin. Roy eyed them for a few seconds before heading back out into the hallway. Breda and Falman were still standing there, looking at Roy for their next orders. 

"Start opening the cells," he finally managed. The horror of what he'd found was trying to sink in, but he was steadfastly refusing to let it. _Later later later_ his mind chanted every time he tried to think about it. "Make sure the medics can get to them."

One by one, they opened the cells, exposing one atrocity after another. Some of the prisoners were in acceptable condition; some, like Northrup, were emaciated. Some responded to voice and touch and some did not react at all when their names were spoken to them. Some managed to string together enough sentences to be considered lucid, some spoke in broken, barely understandable words. Some didn't speak at all.

Some were dead.

Roy felt his earlier hope deflate at the sight of the two people they had found curled up in their cells, starved completely to death. It was clear that the minimum amount of food that had been left in the building had not been shared well-if much at all- with the prisoners. Roy watched a medic cover one of the dead with a sheet, staring at the man's face. It was Benjamin Martin, a civilian alchemist. He had a wife and two children, Roy knew. He wouldn't be the one delivering the bad news-- that would get left to civilian police-- but it hurt quietly, all the same, that they had not arrived on time for him.

"General!" Falman called, looking over at him from where he was examining a clipboard, "This one says Edward!"

Roy walked over quickly, breath held as Breda flipped the lock and began screeching the door open. It felt like an excruciatingly long time as more and more of the cell became visible, and--

\--nothing. 

The cell was empty.

Roy stepped in despite this, turning around twice as despair crushed out any remaining hope he'd had built inside him. The cell was the same as any others, just devoid of its prisoner. After looking around and looking around and praying somewhere in his head that Edward would magically appear in front of him, Roy turned to look at his men. Breda looked like he was going to throw up, and Falman was scanning the clipboard, flipping through the logs as quickly as possible.

"It-- it says he was checked out on 2 pm on Wednesday," he said, voice shaking. Roy counted up-- that was three days prior. "He was never checked back in."

What did that mean? Was Edward-- out of every other prisoner here-- was he the one that got thrown in a truck and taken back to Drachma?

Was he dead? Had he died before the evacuation when they had enough resources to get rid of bodies?

"General?" Breda asked, his voice small. He looked like he'd been suckerpunched. "What do we do now?"

Roy--

\--Roy straightened. He swallowed past the knot in his throat, stepping out of the cell and looking down the hall. Medics were getting the prisoners on stretchers, trying to cut open the straitjackets while keeping their patients as calm as possible. They were shuffling around in the narrow halls awkwardly as they worked, stepping over each other and even over stretchers.

"Warrant Officer, you're still with Bloche on his case. Go assist him. Lieutenant Breda, open the rest of the cells. Help the medics get these people into the barracks so they have more room," he ordered, "We're on the missing persons case, and that's more than just Fullmetal. We need to take care of the people we've found."

It hurt, and Roy could see it on Falman and Breda's faces just how much it did even as they wordlessly obeyed. Falman's shoulders were slumped under his greatcoat and Breda's eyes were a bit glassy. 

Roy looked over at the two bodies, set off to the side and covered in sheets, and felt his stomach twist with dread.

He had no idea what he was going to tell Alphonse.

* * *

 

 

Havoc kicked open the next door, holding up his gun as he stepped into the room. Nothing. It was a small, office-like room with a small desk and an overhead lamp. It was mostly empty, though there looked to be a recording device sitting on the desk. A stack of boxes sat nearby, but none of it was interesting enough to hold his attention for long. He exited the office and headed back out into the hallway. The only rooms down here, three floors down from the top, were offices, it seemed like. There were a few closets-- one, oddly enough, with a wheelchair in it-- but mostly just small rooms with a desk in each one. Probably where the officers worked, Havoc surmised.

Focke came out of the next office, shaking his head as he looked at Havoc. Nothing there either. All around them, soldiers scoured each room, pulling out boxes and recording instruments and mountains of paperwork.

Havoc wasn't interested in any of that. If he wanted paperwork, he would have stayed in Central City. The Drachmans weren't any of his business.

Finding Ed was.

He'd heard rumors now, on the grapevine, of the conditions the prisoners had been found in upstairs. Breda had come down some time later and told him, in subdued tones, that there was still no sign of Ed.

Havoc hadn't responded, Breda sounded beaten, but Havoc knew better. He'd watched Ed grow up from a smart-ass kid to an equally smart-ass adult. He'd survived batshit crazy situations nobody could imagine surviving. He'd helped Breda and Becky drag Havoc's ass out of his wheelchair and back on his feet and even when the deed was done and he was walking again, still found time to come and go running with him on the weekends.

Ed couldn't be dead. There was no world that existed where Ed being dead would make _sense_ , because, above all else, Ed was a fighter. He was a survivor. 

"Sir?"

Focke sounded timid. Havoc had wanted to strangle him, in the beginning, but found that this had worn off pretty quickly even as Breda and Mustang continued to harass him. He'd known officers to do worse things, and Focke himself wasn't really a bad person. He'd made a stupid mistake, and Havoc could relate to that. He'd made plenty himself-- dating Solaris being at the top of that. If he'd been the only one injured, that would've been one thing, but Havoc knew that every inch of scarred skin on Mustang's side could be attributed to that mistake.

"There's the last floor, sir," Focke said, his voice a touch disheartened. "If you want to look?"

There were already men down there, Havoc knew. Bloche's men were taking the place apart for every scrap of evidence pointing to Drachman interference. They weren't explicitly looking for people, but if they had found another cell, somebody would have come up to alert Mustang. After a few moments of indecision, Havoc holstered his gun.

"Come on," he said, "Let's go have a look around. That way we're sure we searched everything."

Havoc and Focke headed over to the lift and took it down to the next floor. The pervasive scent of cleaners and formaldehyde hit Havoc like a brick wall, but he shook his head and put the thought aside as the lift squealed to a halt. White washed halls greeted him once more, as sterile as the hospital had been, and Havoc tried to ignore the crawling sensation under his skin as the two men stepped into the autopsy room. Bloche's men were mostly centered around the file cabinets, going through reams of paperwork. All of the morgue cooler trays were pulled out, exposing a lot more bodies than had been on the missing persons list. A medic was looking over the bodies with a practiced eye, and nearby a soldier stood guard over the two captured orderlies, dressed in hospital scrubs and sitting with their hands on their heads.

Havoc wondered if all of the dead had been alchemists, or some kind of control group of normal Amestrian people.

The thought made him cold inside, and his mind turned to the surgery room he had found earlier. He didn't want to think about what kind of suffering these people had gone through at the hands of the Drachman 'doctors'.

Seeing that this room was thoroughly searched and fitted out with men, Havoc angled towards the open door on the far end. There were fewer people in this room, although several soldiers were still doggedly turning over old medical equipment and operation tables, hunting for anything useful. Broken tiles, crumbling chunks of concrete, tons and tons of old paperwork, two broken wheelchairs, and large rolls of padding were scattered everywhere, like this was the trash room of the facility. An old safe was currently the focus of an investigation as either the key or a sledgehammer was being hunted for. Havoc ignored it, fairly certain that if it was dumped sideways in a trash room, there wasn't anything valuable in it. He carefully paced the path that had been cleared through the garbage, following it over to a large metal door in the wall. Uncertainly, Havoc took hold of the handle and pulled it open.

It was an oven. Havoc grimaced, eyeing the charred edges of the tray inside and glancing at the fine ash and bits of bone at the bottom.

Mustang would be likely to have the actual numbers, but Havoc knew that ovens had to be on pretty high to burn human bodies down to nothing. He reached in and swiped some soot off the wall. It was cool to the touch. Even if they had turned the oven off when they evacuated, it would likely still be in the cooling down process and would still be pretty warm inside, especially if left shut. Not to mention that there was no sign of the greasy scent of burned meat. It all smelled like ash and dust.

So the oven hadn't been in operation in a little while, and Ed was unlikely to have met his end inside it. Havoc shut the door and turned away.

He surveyed the room again. Nothing really stuck out to him. He let his gaze carefully pick over the debris and trash of the room, and it finally settled on the garbage bag resting against the far wall.

Havoc's heart dropped. There'd been several prisoners found dead upstairs. They wouldn't... would they? The orderlies couldn't have been just putting the bodies in bags and throwing them in with the rest of the garbage, could they have? Havoc couldn't feel his feet even as he moved wordlessly down the path towards the garbage bag. He heard Focke close behind him, but couldn't bring himself to speak to the man as he took hold of the top of the bag, and using the utility knife strapped to his shoulder, cut the ties.

He looked in, and heaved a deep breath of relief. Cold tension poured out of him, leaving him a bit drained as he stared at what appeared to be some kind of medical waste.

"What are those?" Focke asked, ducking in closer to pull out what looked like a plastic bag. There were traces of something liquid and brown inside them. Havoc pulled out another and squinted at the fine print on the side.

"Chocolate flavor," he read out loud, grimacing. "It's liquid food. They use these in hospitals if someone can't eat properly. Things like that."

He tossed the trash bag down, frowning. The path ended there, at the garbage bag and the wall.

"Hey!" Havoc called to the men still inspecting the safe, "Did you guys dig this path?"

"No sir," called one of the men, straightening up from the safe, "It was here when we cleared this story."

"So why would they have even bothered to dig a path if this is all garbage anyways?" Havoc muttered under his breath, looking back at the trash bag. If the orderlies had just come down here to take the trash out, as it were, why come all the way to the far side of the room?

"Sir?" 

Havoc looked over. Focke seemed to be at just as much a loss as he was, but he was inspecting the wall-- or more properly, he was looking at a groove in the concrete. He was able to fit his fingers into the groove, and as Havoc looked, he realized there was a metal track inside.

It was a door.

"Hey," he called out, trying to pull on the heavy concrete. It didn't budge, and Havoc briefly considered helping the search for a sledgehammer until Focke patted his arm and pointed at a low metal bar set in the wall, partially obscured by the garbage. They both grabbed it and  _pulled_ , and the door screeched as its massive weight was dragged through its track, opening to reveal another room. The soldiers, previously engrossed in the safe, were on them in an instant with their guns drawn.

Havoc nearly drew his as well, but the room inside was small and was clear in mere minutes. It looked like more trash at first, complete with a broken set of morgue coolers leaned up against the wall. Several surprised rats squealed as they ducked into nearby corners and hideyholes.

A working fridge was in the room, and when Havoc went to inspect it, he found a few packs of the liquid food from the garbage bag inside. There were only a few remaining, and one half-empty one. They'd been rationing it out for the poor victim being forcefed, Havoc realized. A wheelchair was sitting there as well, and the sight of the leather restraints made his skin start crawling again.

He couldn't imagine being strapped down into his own wheelchair like that. The sheer helplessness of the idea nearly made him want to scream.

Next to the wheelchair was a table, which was laden down with a bedpan and the medical tubing needed for force-feeding someone. A hose hooked up to a sink nearby was dripping water still. Havoc eyed all of this with dread growing in the pit of his stomach.

"Hey, Lieutenant?" 

Havoc turned away from the table. Focke was standing at the broken coolers, looking at one of the doors. In his hand was a padlock hanging from a latch.

"Why would you need to lock a body in?" Focke asked. "I think we need some bolt cutters, sir."

Havoc's face darkened.

"No, I don't think we do," he scowled, turning to one of Bloche's men."Go get those orderlies in the other room. I'll bet my next paycheck one of those fucks has a key on them."

It didn't take long. The other soldiers weren't on the missing persons case, but they'd all seen the bodies in the morgue and Havoc could tell none of them were in the mood to play the 'good cop' role. Havoc's eyes narrowed on the shorter of the two orderlies. Plain as day, a key hung from the chain around his neck. Unable to speak Drachman, Havoc gestured at him and at the padlock, and the soldier standing close behind them shoved him forward.

Quickly, while trying to look back multiple times to keep an eye on all the guns pointed at him, the orderly pulled the chain off his neck and unlocked the padlock, pulling the latch free. Havoc nodded to the door of the cooler, indicating for him to open it.

The orderly looked on nervously, glancing between Havoc, Focke, and the men who all still had their weapons drawn. Decisions were easily made and the orderly took hold of the handle and pulled the door open. 

At first, Havoc couldn't see anything. A second later, his heart jumped, trying to escape into his throat as the bottom of a pair of feet greeted him-- one flesh, one automail. 

They had found Edward.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, this took so long I'm so sorry, and thanks everyone for your sweet comments on the last chapter. As always any art I make for this story can be found on my tumblr [here.](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au)

 

 

Silence descended upon the men as they stared at the pair of feet inside of the morgue cooler. For a few seconds, Havoc couldn't seem to move, couldn't shake himself out of the stupor of seeing Edward's mismatched feet. He was rooted to the spot, breath stolen from his lungs.

The toes on the right foot suddenly twitched, and Havoc came crashing back to reality with all the force of a ten-ton anvil.

“Pull him out,” he hissed at the orderly, who was staring between the soldiers and morgue cooler with something approaching terror. His was the face of a man who knew exactly what he'd done wrong and was terrified to face the consequences. Havoc nearly drew his gun again, but held himself steady as he gestured to the cooler, indicating his order, “ _Pull him out_!”

The orderly grabbed the handle on the tray and quickly began to pull, metal wheels screeching in their rusty tracks as the horror of what they'd done was revealed. Havoc quickly rounded the side of the tray, his heart dropping into the pit of his stomach.

Edward was--

–- he looked _dead_.  
  
Havoc couldn't make out what he was looking at first, so covered in leather straps and medical tubing that Edward looked tiny under it all. His eyes were closed, and the straitjacket was so cumbersome and bulky that it was hard to tell if he was even breathing. What looked like a muzzle was strapped around his face. A solid metal collar was around his neck. What skin Havoc could see was fish belly pale and near skeletal, and Ed's nostrils were ringed with dried blood and bruises from being force-fed.  
  
Havoc gestured for Focke to help him, pulling on all the leather straps that kept Edward pinioned to the tray. As they worked, as he was pulling the strap away from Ed's right ankle to uncover the yellowed bruises underneath, Edward twitched again. His eyes didn't open, and it wasn't centered to his foot like Havoc had thought-- it was a full body twitch, like it was completely involuntary.

It reminded Havoc of his physical therapy, when he got to the part where his legs twitched sporadically before he had gained real control over them. It was nerve damage, his physical therapist had explained, and Havoc quietly hoped that it wasn't the case here. They had used the stone up on his legs and Mustang's eyes-- they couldn't fix paralysis as easily now.

Havoc saw the orderly shift towards Edward, like he was going to assist, or grab him or--

Havoc resisted the urge to punch the man in the face, swallowing down his anger as he rounded on the orderly with a glare. The man backed down just as quickly as he'd stepped forward, and Havoc turned to look at Bloche's men, who were staring at Edward with wide, horrified eyes. 

It was one thing to just hear about the mess upstairs-- it was entirely another to witness it.

“Go get those medics,” he growled, “He needs help. Go on-- and take these two with you.”

He was obeyed instantly, one of the soldiers grabbing the orderly by the back of his shirt and physically yanking him out of the back room. A few minutes later, right as Havoc and Focke managed to clear the straps off of Edward, the medics appeared and descended on him. The two men were pushed out of the way but Havoc did not resent it, hovering nearby as he watched the medics immediately set to work on the straitjacket and muzzle, pulling trauma shears from one of their packs to start slicing through canvas and leather.

“Go get a stretcher from upstairs,” Havoc muttered to Focke, “They'll need it. And tell Mustang we found him.”

Focke hesitated for just a moment, then left on hurried feet. Havoc didn't bother to watch him leave, too engrossed in watching as the medic hacked through the straitjacket and began to pull it off, reaching in at one point and hacking through some leather loops that encircled Ed's wrists. It felt like he wasn't breathing as Ed's chest came into view.

He barely looked like Ed, Havoc mused as the medics fished his bent arms out of the straitjacket sleeves, revealing his duct taped hands. A year and a half ago, Edward had been a live wire, loud and yelling on his way out the door, bright-eyed and tanned and a golden ponytail waving like a banner behind him.

Now though, he was silent. Torture had bleached all the life and color out of him. His eyes stayed closed even as the medics snipped through the tape off his hands, and even his hair seemed washed out and gray, all matted and dirty around his head. His ribs were so prominent that it looked like they could burst through his skin like paper.

The straitjacket was tossed aside, left to crumple on the floor. The collar followed soon after, after unscrewing the bolt that held it in place. Havoc went to pick them up, watching as the medic opened his kit and pulled out a syringe. Folding the straitjacket and setting it with the collar on the table nearby, Havoc moved back over to Ed's side.

“What's the syringe for?” he asked gruffly, with a hint of suspicion, following the movement of the medic's hands as they disappeared between Ed's legs and--

“Oh.”

“It's to remove the catheter,” the medic explained, “We have to deflate the balloon in his bladder. We can't give him any pain relief in this condition, but we can ease some of the discomfort at least by taking the unnecessary stuff off.”

There was silence for a few minutes as the medics worked. Havoc backed off again to give them space, stomach clenching as medical tubing was removed and pulled away. The catheter was removed after some effort and tossed carelessly aside. Havoc grimaced at the sight of the yellowed plastic.

“His pulse is weak,” the medic with his fingers pressed to the inside of Ed's neck murmured quietly, “At a 40, too weak for an automail user. His breathing is irregular too. He needs a hospital as soon as possible.”

There were stumbling footsteps in the door, and everyone glanced over to see Focke. He was half dragging, half-carrying a stretcher, and a brown quilt was slung over his shoulder. Havoc went over to help him and the two heaved the stretcher up onto the edge of the tray. With quick, professional movements, the two medics shifted and raised the unconscious Edward over onto the stretcher. Ed's automail arm fell limp at his side, and Havoc carefully shifted it, feeling the metal plates sliding and clicking under his fingers. There was rust on the metal, built up in the elbow and keeping it from falling completely straight.

Aside from picking up the pieces that Scar had made of Ed's automail once, Havoc had never touched Ed's prosthetic limbs. Just the thought of it felt intrusive-- Ed was usually so fiercely defensive of his personal space, would be snarling and snapping at Havoc if he was awake right now as the older man turned the automail wrist, feeling it turn on its bearings.

Havoc set the automail down, looking at Ed's flesh arm. It was thin, covered in old scars from years of tough living and hard won battles. It refused to lay straight no matter how much the medic tried to gently finagle it, like the elbow had frozen solid after so long in a straitjacket. Eventually they left his still-curled fingers resting on the his stomach.

“Alright,” one medic muttered, taking the brown quilt and spreading it over Ed's lower half to help give him some decency, “Let's get him upstairs.”

Havoc and Focke counted off to three before lifting the stretcher. Ed was light-- lighter than what he ought to have been what with two solid metal limbs. Havoc swallowed anxiously at the thought as they carefully picked their way through the trash room. The soldiers had dragged both orderlies in there and were making them dig through the garbage instead of just sitting in the autopsy room.

The lift came next, and it was a bit of a challenge to get the stretcher inside without nearly tipping Ed out of it. They jolted him once, and Havoc had nearly frozen, staring at Ed and waiting for a moan, or a whimper, or a snarl, or--

\--nothing. They got nothing but silence. His chest moved up and down, and one medic was keeping a check on his pulse. If it weren't for those two things, plus the occasional full body twitch that had the medics frowning with concern, Havoc would've thought he was dead.

Floors dinged by as they managed to squeeze the gate closed. Havoc and Focke were pressed up tightly against the walls of the lift, and the medics were crushed into a corner as they kept track of Edward's vital signs.

They reached the floor they started on and managed to squeeze out into the hall. Focke rested the handle of the stretcher on his hip for a moment to point down the hall.

“They set up in the barracks room over there,” he said, grabbing the handle back before it could slip, “There's beds in there-- it's where I got the blanket. It looked like they'd brought in a lot of stuff from the surgery room. And it's-- it's _loud_.”

Havoc opened his mouth to ask what Focke meant by _loud_ , but then he heard it--

A high, broken screaming. It sent the hairs on the back of his neck up and he nearly froze, but the stretcher pushed into his back and he stumbled forward again as the screaming broke out into hysterical sobs. As they rounded corners and passed the open cells, Havoc felt the pit in his stomach deepen at the sight of the tiny padded rooms inside. The sobbing grew louder and became intermingled with talking voices, barked orders, and various other cries of distress.

There were more soldiers the closer they got to the barracks, and they all pressed themselves against the walls as they passed, giving Edward looks that alternated between pity and uneasiness. On their way by, Havoc glimpsed the skeleton crew that had been left inside the facility. They were all kept sitting down in what looked like a rec room of sorts, guarded and being questioned by various soldiers.

For a brief moment Havoc wondered what would happen to them, but thinking of Edward's condition made him put that thought out of mind. He didn't care if they were dragged against a wall and executed, he decided as they passed the rec room and into the barracks.

Roy looked up mid-sentence as a new group of people walked into the barracks. The sight of Havoc gave him pause, and as his gaze turned down to the stretcher that hung between him and Focke, searing panic and elation twisted through him again. Focke had run into the barracks several minutes prior with the announcement that they'd found Edward alive, and the thought had him both relieved and scared.

Relieved, because he was still there and alive. All of the dread at what he was going to tell Al, all of the fear as he'd wondered what had become of Ed had drained out of him.

All the fear had come back though, because of the look on Focke's face. He looked like he'd seen a literal ghost, like he'd seen something horrific and was relieving it over and over in his mind.

How bad off was Edward, then? The figure in the stretcher was prone and still, buried under the weight of one of the blankets from the beds around them. Havoc had gone completely expressionless, but Roy could see the edge of despair in the line of the man's shoulders, the pained tilt to the usually determined scowl.

The odd little group found an empty bed, and they were soon crowded too close together to be able to spot Edward as they moved him from stretcher to mattress. Roy had seized the barracks to use as a sort of field hospital. With the available beds, the medics' kits and after commandeering a bunch of medical equipment from the surgery room they'd found, they'd managed to create a decent enough hospital. They still didn't have any doctors though, so the medics were limited to their emergency training.

They had tried to use the surgery room first, but one step in there and one of the more aware kidnapping victims had started screaming hysterically, and they were still attempting to calm him down. The man had been released from his straitjacket and shackles, but was still curled in on himself, huddled up against the bed rails and babbling in terror every time he was touched.

Roy looked over in the far corner. The first two dead victims they had found had been tucked away, out of sight as much as possible. They had been joined earlier by a third when one of the prisoners had stopped breathing. After several desperate attempts of resuscitation, he was gone. No heartbeat, nothing. It had been so fast and so brutal that Roy felt as though he had whiplash, and the frenzied attempts at saving his life had whipped up a panic with the remaining victims. They were alternating now between crying, screaming, or rocking back and forth feverishly.

One mumbled to herself in low undertones, getting angrier and angrier the more she was disturbed until she started shouting at the ground, and then she quieted down when left alone. Several were mostly lucid, if a little dazed from their incarceration. With a bit of work, they were able to answer basic questions. Eye contact was difficult to maintain with any of the victims. Focus was even harder.

If the obvious mental trauma wasn't enough, most of them were in bad condition, physically speaking.

With Falman's translation, Roy had figured out that the supply line to Drachma had been cut short due to the inclement weather. As rations in the facility dwindled, the officers were given the largest ratio of the food. After that came the ranked soldiers, then the doctors and orderlies.

Finally came the 'patients', as they had been referred to by the questioned soldier. Eventually, most of the building had evacuated back to Drachma to ease up on the supply of food, though it didn't seem like the skeleton crew had decided to share their rations with the people locked up in their little pieces of hell they called cells.

Roy looked back at Bloche. The other man was giving him a strong side-eye, still holding up a map of the facility and pointing at the officer's quarters. They'd been carefully digging through every room for more evidence. Currently it seemed like there were no official orders from the Drachman czar, nothing that laid this misdeed at his feet. If they couldn't find anything, the czar had the power of deniability. He could say the whole facility was a terrorist organization with no affiliation to the Drachman government.

Everything would go back to the status quo. This facility would be dismantled. The soldiers they'd caught inside would be punished. The Drachmans would sneak back in and build another cell. If they could at least figure out how they were getting past Briggs, they'd be able to plug up that particular leak, but Roy had no doubt that there were an infinite number of small passes in the mountain range that would let them through to Amestris.

If they could find the orders from the top though, that was evidence of Drachman interference. It would give incentive for war.

Roy wasn't sure which he'd rather have at this point. His sense of justice warred with his sense of basic humanity. A Drachman war wouldn't be fought in Drachma-- it'd be on the border, it would be on Amestrian streets. It would devastate the northern sector, and the country as a whole.

Over Roy's head, the lights abruptly crackled and flickered. He looked up. Around him, the talking and snapped orders stopped, leaving behind only the sound of the crying prisoners. There was a slamming, whining sound and the lights turned off completely.

A prisoner shrieked. There were muttered orders and lanterns were flicked on just in time for the whining noise to return, and the lights to turn back on. The prisoners that were upright were sobbing and crying uncontrollably now, their repetitive movements taking a more frantic pace.

Still standing over Edward's prone form, Havoc met his gaze from across the room.

Roy looked back at Bloche.

“Has anyone located the generators for this place?”

“Yes, sir,” Bloche replied, setting his blueprints down and frowning, “There isn't a lot of gas left to keep powering every single light. When we first arrived a lot of rooms were powered down, but with everyone going through them, we might be burning through what was left.”

The lights flickered again. The mumbling woman put her hands over her ears and started shrieking.

“ _DON'T PUT ME IN THE DARK I DON'T WANT TO GO I DON'T WANT TO GO IDON'TWANTTOGOIDON'TWANTTOGO--_ ”

Two medics were with her in an instant in an attempt to calm her down, but the damage was done. The rest of the prisoners that could muster the strength began to panic and kick up a fuss as well, and for a moment the din was overwhelming. Roy felt like he was wading in a sea of misery. He could hear the terror in their voices, and he could see the growing fear in the eyes of the soldiers.

It was having an effect on the men-- and not a good one.

He looked back at Bloche again.

“We need to get these people out of here,” he said quietly, “They need medical attention and--”

He hesitated, then managed to merely punctuate this statement with a nod towards the men hugging the walls of the barracks. Bloche shot them a quick look. Soldiers were trained in a lot of situations, but Roy was fairly certain something like this wasn't taught in academy.

“Nearest hospital would be North City, and that's a hell of a drive,” Bloche murmured, “You'd need at least two trucks to carry everyone, and you'd be taking most of my medics.”

“I don't think you'll need all of them,” Roy countered, “There was barely a fight, and there isn't much of a chance that there will be one at all. I can take my men, two trucks, and a few medics to handle the patients. Two of your men can come with us, get the necessary fuel you'll need to keep this place lit, and drive the trucks back.”

Bloche considered this, looked at the blueprints in his hand, then looked over at several of the men next to the wall.

“Randall, Shaw,” he ordered, and two of the men practically scurried over to him, clearly overwhelmed by the happenings around them. “Get two trucks and a dozen men ready. You're driving to North City.”

The two walked off quickly, slinging their rifles onto their backs. Bloche gave Roy a hard side-eye.

“Four medics, two per truck,” he said, “...Sir. Can you leave your radio guy and the Warrant Officer?”

“I can do that,” Roy replied, “I'm taking the rest of my men, including Captain Hawkeye.”

Bloche thought about that for a few seconds, then nodded.

“I don't forsee us needing our snipers at present,” he folded his blueprints and stood at attention, “I'll send in copies of my reports for your case, sir. Have a safe ride to North City.”

It was probably the politest way Bloche had addressed him over the last few days, but Roy said nothing of it as he turned on his heel. He steeled himself, stomach clenching as he began to walk over towards Edward. Behind him, Bloche started barking orders to start gathering up stretchers and patients.

Havoc watched him as he approached. There was something crumpled in his expression, something indecipherable. Like a cross between relief and grief.

Roy wondered if this was what closure was supposed to feel like.

He always thought it was supposed to be a good thing.

Roy stopped at the foot of the bed they'd put Edward in. Ed looked nothing like the person Roy had sent out of his office a year and a half ago. For all that Roy loved needling Ed on his height, Ed was... larger than life. He'd punched out a _god_ at sixteen. He radiated strength; he burned with all the light of the sun. Where ever he went, the tides turned to follow him because he was that strong, that well loved by everyone around him. With the strength of his presence, he might as well have been ten feet tall.

Now though, Ed was _small_. He laid limp, eyes closed against whatever amount of suffering he'd been through. Dark bruises were on his face; his skin was tinged grey and washed out under the bright lights overhead. Roy recalled that Edward had had a scar on his forehead, just over his eye-- but now there was a white scar over his nose and several more curling over his left cheek. His matted hair looked nothing like the golden standard that he typically carried, that Roy had last seen on him as he left the office a year and a half ago. His shoulders, once straight and strong, looked weak and bowed, broken against the force of the gale blowing against him.

Muscle and fat had been burned away to reveal a stick thin body underneath. The blanket was laying over his hips, providing some modicum of privacy. Roy's eyes were drawn instead to his chest and stomach. Raised scars were cut down the front of his body, a y-pattern disturbingly similar to autopsy cadavers. His ribs raked against his skin, prominent enough for Roy to count. He twitched every so often, an involuntary movement that wracked his thin, broken frame.

“We're moving them,” Roy found himself saying, his voice sounding distant even to his ears. He managed to tear his gaze away from Ed to look at Havoc, “Help get them on the trucks. Pick four good medics to take with us.”

“...The trucks aren't heated,” Havoc replied quietly, “That's going to be a hard ride.”

“I'll think of something to alleviate that problem,” Roy promised quietly, “...Are you alright, Lieutenant?”

Havoc hesitated, something dark flickering in his eyes. Roy hadn't seen how Edward was found. He hadn't seen whatever hellish torment they'd inflicted on him, but Havoc had, and Roy could see the horror of it all waging a war in his expression.

“...I'll be alright when we get him home,” Havoc finally rasped, reaching up and slipping a cigarette into his mouth. His hands shook finely. “It'll be alright when we get back.”

Maybe. Maybe it would be. Maybe Ed would wake up, say 'what took you so long?' and he'd get better and everything would be okay again.

The whimpers and cries of the freed prisoners filtered back into his hearing, and Roy quietly doubted that it would be all so simple.

Nodding at Havoc, and casting Edward one last, searching look, Roy turned and began to head away from the barracks and the din of pain and fear. He trusted that Havoc would spread the word and start getting people moving. He headed through hallways, ignoring or only half-acknowledging salutes on his way past, until he made it back out to the open area where the Drachmans had been parking their trucks. Now, two Amestrian trucks were parked there instead. The two men that Bloche had called out were there, quickly pulling off equipment and needed supplies that would have to be left behind at the facility.

Roy looked around the open room. The walls were rock, part of the tunnel of the old mine. They were incredibly smooth though, unnaturally so. They had caught his eye earlier but he'd been too caught up in the raid to expend much thought to it.

Now though...

He laid a hand on the wall, feeling how the earthen walls felt as smooth as his granite-topped desk back in Central. He stepped back and frowned. The walls inside the building were smooth too-- concrete and cement, but perfectly, unnaturally smooth to the touch. There wasn't any of the usual grit that came with those materials.

The Drachmans wouldn't have been able to rent cement trucks and make this facility without attracting eyes. The unnatural-ness of everything, plus the covert way an entire building had been set up with no notice paid to it, spoke to only one thing.

There was an alchemist helping them.

Roy considered this hypothesis carefully, hand still on the wall. He had made a list of everybody recovered, dead and alive. There were a lot of dead faces that he didn't know or have any missing persons records of-- which meant a lot of work was going to be ahead of him when it came to body identification—but he knew there were at least two State Alchemists still missing-- Kendrick Minsk and Muric Banner.

Was one of them in collusion with the Drachmans? Roy hated to think like that about potential victims. A furnace had been found downstairs, with ash and bone inside. It was entirely possible that their remains had simply been burned.

Keeping this thought in mind, Roy turned back to the trucks. Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he climbed up into the back of the one nearest him. Shaw had already cleared the benches out, leaving them abandoned off to the side of the car port. Inside, the truck walls were metal and canvas-- not the most insulating of materials, but at least it was an enclosed space. He knelt down to the wood floor and gave it a long look.

After a few minutes of sparking inspiration and mentally rearranging his personal array into something less... _flammable_ , Roy pulled out his pen knife and began to carefully carve a new circle out into the wood. Making a flame was easy. A quick snap and he could burn everything in his path.

Making heat? Making it circulate enough to be effective while maintaining enough control to avoid burning everyone alive inside their own skin? That took effort. That took precision-- something Roy _loved_. He smiled grimly as he finished the array and pressed his fingers to the outer edge of the array.

Heat burst forward, harsh and blistering at first before he wrangled it under control. He carefully wound it around the inside the of truck, blotting out the cold seeping in from outside. Once he had it at an acceptable temperature, Roy left it and went to the next truck to repeat his experiment.

Done with ensuring the health and comfort of the truck's future occupants, Roy hopped out and left the relative safety of the tunnel, passing through the concrete portal. Just outside the mouth of the tunnel, Fuery had set up shop with his radio terminal, covered in wires and flipping through channels rapidly. A piece of canvas acted as a tent against the howling wind and thick clumps of snow as it whirled by.

Roy didn't say anything, choosing to settle close to him until he was done relaying orders from one person to the other. He tugged his coat tighter around himself, waiting patiently for Fuery to notice him.

It wasn't long.

“Sir?” Fuery's glasses slipped halfway down his nose. He gave Roy a quietly hopeful look.

“We found him,” Roy replied, keeping his voice low even as the radio crackled loudly beside him. “...Alive. He's not in good shape though, so we're taking everybody we found back to North City.”

Roy relayed what Bloche had demanded. Fuery hesitated for several moments, clearly unhappy with the idea of being left behind while they rushed Edward to a hospital. Eventually though, he nodded tightly.

“Yes sir,” he finally agreed, gaze flickering back to his terminal, “...I get to come back as soon as this raid is over? I want to see Ed too.”

“You can, and you will,” Roy promised, “...I'll make sure you get back to us before the week is out, if I have to command half the army up here.”

“...Thanks,” Fuery half-smiled, clearly a little placated by this declaration. He reached up to turn a dial and adjusted his mouthpiece, “Would you like me to call Captain Hawkeye down?”

Roy nodded, sitting by as Fuery clicked over several channels. He picked up the spare set of headphones and put them on, listening as Fuery gave the proper passphrase for the channel. A moment later and Hawkeye's voice crackled to life over the radio.

“ _What's happened?”_

“We found him,” Roy said grimly, “All of them. They're in bad shape, and we need to take them to a hospital. Can you meet us over here at the tunnel entrance?”

The loose end of the canvas tent snapped loudly in the wind, nearly sideswiping Roy. A passing soldier grabbed it and tied it back down, then continued trudging on his way.

Hawkeye's deep, relieved sigh could be heard over the rush of static and background wind.

“ _I'll be there shortly, sir,”_ a pause, “ _Is he alright?_ ”

Roy wanted to lie and say yes, absolutely. Because that was how it was _supposed_ to be, right? Ed should have been just as alive and perfect as he had been, just really pissed at being made to wait for a year and a half for rescue.

“...No,” Roy finally worked himself up to saying, “...He's not.”

“... _Yes, sir.”_

Hawkeye clicked off, and Roy removed the headset and pressed the heel of a hand into his eyes.

“Dr. Marcoh advised against that, sir.”

“Dr. Marcoh is not currently here,” Roy murmured in response, but lowered his hand anyways. He blinked blearily. Nights and nights of no sleep were catching up with him, and he wanted little more than to crawl into one of the now-heated trucks and go to sleep.

Roy had to put that aside, though. He still had a job to do, even if he burned himself out before it was done. He had a responsibility to get these people to some kind of safety.

Bullying himself to his feet, Roy patted Fuery on the shoulder and wished him well. Getting a like response, Roy trudged back through the tunnel to the car port inside. It wasn't much warmer in here, but it was certainly better than the screaming wind outside that cut through his uniform and seeped into his bones.

Why anyone would willingly volunteer their time up north, he would never understand.

Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he made his way back to the trucks. Soldiers and medics were streaming in and out of the open doors now, carrying their patients on stretchers. Some of them lay quietly, covered in thick blankets from the barracks. Others were struggling to sit up, to move around or even to escape their stretchers entirely. Roy suddenly worried that the amount of medics Bloche had assigned to him wouldn't be enough.

He put the thought out of mind though, as Edward was carefully lifted down the stairs between Focke and Havoc. Ed was still unmoving. His eyes remained closed, blonde lashes pressed to his pale cheeks. Roy watched as Edward was lifted into the truck. Behind him, Breda and another soldier came in with another stretcher. The extra soldier exited the truck a few moments later, but Havoc, Focke, and Breda stayed where they were.

Roy waited patiently until every single patient was loaded, helping with the occasional struggle or with loading medical kits and what equipment was portable enough to take from the makeshift hospital inside the facility. Eventually, everything and everyone was squared away. The patients were loaded and the men that Bloche had volunteered had sorted themselves out and were getting in behind the medics. Roy watched as the last pair of jackboots disappeared past the canvas opening of the second truck.

Behind him, he heard the soft sound of gravel shifting, and he turned to see Hawkeye, a tripod under her arm and her rifle on her back. Her uniform pants were soaked from the knee down, indicating that she had slogged on foot all the way from the surface level of the town to the tunnel. Her shoulders and blonde hair were coated in a thin layer of ice and snow. Roy could even see a little bit stuck to her brows and eyelashes.

“General.”

Her voice was quiet and even. Her calm, like the undisturbed surface of a tranquil lake, helped ground Roy's own tumultuous thoughts. He straightened up and nodded at her.

“He's in the first truck,” he said, trying to emulate her calmness, “When I get done briefing the drivers I'll be along.”

Roy went to step away, then paused as a thickly mittened hand snaked around his wrist and pulled him to a halt. Looking back, he caught the look in Hawkeye's russet brown eyes-- underneath the placid waters of her demeanor, Roy could see the real hurricane going on beneath the surface.

“He's not in good shape,” he found himself saying, feeling a bit outside of himself as he spoke. This wasn't a trite condolence, nor false hope. This was the honest truth that had lain beneath all the encouragement he had given Havoc and the others. “He's not conscious, nor is he breathing well. The drive to North City is going to be hard and we've already lost one of the prisoners. ...This would be the best time to see him again.”

He couldn't bring himself to say that it might be the only time she'd get to see Edward again. He couldn't find the strength to say that they could very likely lose him on the way to North City. Roy didn't need to, because Hawkeye's calm expression flickered then, exposing the open wound of grief for a split second. It was only a second though, and she nodded at Roy once, then headed to the back of the truck he'd indicated to her.

Roy stood for several long seconds in the car port. He could hear the gathered prisoners making small noises of fear and pain, and he could hear the devastating silence beneath it from the prisoners too weak to do so.

Swallowing this down, Roy went to the front of both trucks, speaking to each driver and impressing upon them the urgency of their situation. They absolutely had to drive as fast as possible, but Roy didn't want a single blown tire on the way there. A lost hour could be a lost life, and Roy wasn't sure how he'd handle watching Edward die in front of him.

Roy made a quick circuit around the trucks, looking for any defect or small problem that would become a larger problem later. He could order someone else to do this-- he was a _general_ , after all, and there were certainly enough men to take care of these smaller things for him, but Roy felt better after seeing the four spare tires for himself.

Satisfied, Roy waved to The Truck that Didn't Have Edward, and it took the lead, blasting Roy with exhaust on it's way through the massive concrete portal. Roy quickmarched over to The Truck that Had Edward and climbed up onto the back just as it started to pull off.

Yanking the canvas flaps shut and tying them in place, Roy was pleased to find that his array had worked beautifully in his absence. Warm air circulated through the back of the truck, making it so that even the medics could take their gloves off to keep check on their patients. Without the seats and with so many stretchers pushed in together, everyone that wasn't a prisoner or a medic were crushed together in the corners nearest the truck cabin.

Roy's gaze settled on Hawkeye. She was kneeling down beside Edward's stretcher, her gloves off and a wistful expression on her face. She was smoothing Ed's matted bangs away from his face, being careful as she made sure his blanket was tucked all the way up. A medic sat on the other side of Ed's stretcher, keeping track of Ed's pulse while murmuring soothingly to the rocking patient sitting next to him.

“If you're not currently doing anything, I would advise all of you to start doing so,” Roy ordered after a few moments, “Find a stretcher and start helping keep everybody calm.”

There was a scramble as everyone obeyed. Focke and Breda found patients that needed soothing words and a steady hand to keep them from panic, and Havoc found one that needed a finger on his pulse as they drove along. The two medics flashed Roy appreciative glances as the rest of Bloche's men obeyed as well. Very quickly, most of the prisoners that needed someone were accompanied by a soldier.

Roy slipped into the space by Edward's head. The younger man did not react, didn't open his eyes in the slightest even as Hawkeye pressed a hand over his scarred cheek.

“...He's so cold,” Hawkeye whispered quietly, not looking up at Roy, “He barely feels alive.”

Edward didn't _look_ alive. His cheeks were hollowed out and there were dark half-circles carved under his eyes. Even his throat looked too thin to hold the weight of his head. Roy reached forward and--

\--stopped. He'd never _touched_ Ed before, except maybe in passing. Edward had always seemed so viciously defensive of his personal space that the thought of anyone touching him without his permission was just... obscene. Strange.

Roy settled for touching the ends of Ed's hair. It was filthy with collected grime and sweat, uncared for over time. It was definitely shorter than it was when Roy had last seen Edward, and sections of it were matted up so tightly he could see it pulling at Ed's scalp, reddening and pulling at the skin there.

How much pain had Edward been in, Roy wondered, before he had lost consciousness? Had he just started blotting things out? When was the last time the younger man had been awake and aware, truly?

Roy let these thoughts circulate in his head as the trucks bounced and rocked their way back up to the road. When they hit smooth pavement again, Roy found himself resting his head on his knee. Even with the wind rushing past the canvassed trucks, it was still warm on the inside, and in spite of himself, nights upon nights of no sleep finally caught up with Roy. It was the kind of sleep where he stayed distantly aware of his surroundings, feeling the bump and lurch of the truck and occasional snatches of conversation around him.

Eventually, the soft, hazy edges of dreams filtered in to his dozing brain. Most made no sense; some were a little strange. In one, he dreamed that he was doodling on his paperwork in Central, for some reason sitting at Hakuro's desk, while the man in question drank tea and talked to Selim Bradley about knitting tea cozies in the window seat.

Selim had a rather educated opinion on the subject, Roy decided when he blearily woke up. Looking around, nothing seemed to have changed except for the weak morning light filtering in through the canvas opening. He felt anything but rested as he looked down at Ed's still face. Hawkeye's hand still rested on his cheek, her calloused thumb smoothing over the whitened scars in a repetitive motion. Havoc and Breda had traded places, Havoc now quietly talking to a patient that was sitting half-curled in on herself. At some point while Roy had been sleep, he seemed to have gotten her to stop rocking, at least, and she was now listening to him with her head cocked to the side.

That was... good? At least somebody seemed to be recovering. Roy rested his head back on his knee to watch Edward. It didn't take too long before he drifted off again, though his dreams took a different turn this time.

In this one, Edward was sitting in front of Roy's house, watering the flower bed that Roy had never planted anything in. Edward was a ten-year-old again, as evidenced by his short-cropped hair and the fact that his arm and leg were completely gone. He wore his red trench-coat, except it was way too big for him and fell in folds all around his seated body. The coat was filthy and muddy and filled with enough holes to make it borderline useless, but Edward didn't seem to notice-- or maybe he didn't care.

The dirt was rapidly turning into a mud-slicked mess. The water in the canister that Ed held in his single hand seemed to be never ending.

“ _There's nothing there_ ,” Roy tried to argue, pushing on Ed's shoulder to get his attention. “ _There isn't anything planted there._ ”

“ _If I keep trying,_ something _oughta_ _grow there_ ,” Edward replied, his young voice firm. He still didn't look up at Roy.

Roy looked at the watering can and realized that it was no longer pouring water, but blood. It puddled out of the flowerbed, around the garden stones and pooled around Ed's knees, and suddenly Edward was disappearing into it, like red paint dissolving in water, and Roy was reaching and--

“ _Roy_ \--!”

Roy snapped awake, feeling Hawkeye's hand on his chest as she rapidly pushed him backward. He opened his mouth to reassure her, to tell her he was okay and _it was just a dream_ but realized rather abruptly that she wasn't looking at him. She hadn't been waking him up, she'd been getting him out of the way. Her gaze was pointed towards Edward and--

Roy looked over and, despite the warmth of the truck, felt his insides freeze into ice. It felt like a knife had been slipped in between his ribs at the sight of the medic pushing down on Edward's thin chest.

“What--?”

“He stopped breathing,” Hawkeye whispered, her voice catching as her hand came up to cover her mouth. It was the closest Roy had seen her come to crying in a long, long time. “He stopped breathing.”

Roy looked over and saw Breda and Havoc looking on as well, their expressions horrified and ashen. The medic counted out chest compressions and Roy felt like his heart was beating in time with each one. There was a pounding in his ears as the medic bent and began administering mouth-to-mouth. The other medic climbed and scrambled around stretchers, a bag-valve mask clenched in his hands.

It felt like an eternity as Roy watched the first medic return to chest compressions. It felt like he wasn't even there in the truck. All feeling had gone out of his body as he slowly prepared for this-- already preparing what he was going to say to Alphonse and the Rockbell girl, what he was going to have to sit down and tell Pinako Rockbell-- how to look the old woman in the eyes as he explained that her grandson had died in front of him and he'd been unable to do anything about it. How he was going to hold his men together. The apology he was going to have to give Fuery that he hadn't gotten his chance to see Ed alive again, and--

\--Ed coughed. Gasped. His eyes were still shut, even as the medic whipped him onto his side, but his soft, broken gasps were like the gift of life to everyone in the truck that cared about him. Roy heard Havoc stutter out an anxious huff of laughter-- no doubt the product of relief from the sudden terror of nearly losing everything they'd been working to keep alive.

The second medic pushed the mask over Edward's face, using a firm hand to keep it sealed as he squeezed the pump on the front of the mask. Roy watched as the plastic inside fogged a little with every unsteady breath that Ed took.

He wasn't going to sleep again. His heart couldn't take it, and as the pieces of the dream he'd had started to filter back in through the dying panic, he wasn't sure if his _head_ could take it. Getting himself back under control-- mentally reeling back the script he had been making in his head for what he was going to say at Edward's funeral-- Roy looked at Hawkeye. She was pale and grim-faced, but looked like she'd managed to wrest her own fear back into the box where she kept all emotion that prevented her from going where angels feared treading.

“Do you know where we're at?” he asked quietly, reaching up to rub the grit from his eyes. “I apologize for falling asleep.”

“You needed it, General,” Hawkeye replied. If there was still a tremor in her voice as she watched the medics hover over Ed, Roy opted not to mention it. “...We're very close to the city proper now. The last mile marker we passed said another twenty miles.”

Roy looked towards the canvas flap. The morning light from earlier had given way to early afternoon. Getting onto tired, aching feet, Roy cautiously stepped around the medics and went to the end of the truck. Snow still whirled past them, disappearing into the gloomy gray background around them. They had definitely gotten closer to civilization though, judging by the road signs and properly maintained road. Squinting through the snowfall, Roy could see the train tracks nearby headed for the city.

Pulling the canvas shut again, Roy moved to the cabin window and knocked. The man in the passenger seat reached back and pulled the window open.

“Go straight to the hospital when we get into the city,” Roy ordered sharply, “Don't stop for any reason. If we wind up tumbling into the parking lot on blown tires, so be it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The window was shut again, and Roy returned to his spot close to Edward. The medic was still pumping the bag mask, watching Edward closely through narrowed, focused eyes. Every breath he took was fragile and shaky, like a leaf clinging to a tree branch long after autumn was over.

Roy rubbed his face, cleaning the grit out of his eyes as he settled back next to Hawkeye. The last throes of panic ebbed out of him, leaving only exhaustion and the lingering sense of fear that Edward would stop breathing again, that they could possibly lose him in the parking lot of the hospital, mere yards from safety and proper care.

Roy shook these thoughts out of his head, choosing to rest instead on his haunches as he watched the medics work on Edward. Edward wasn't reacting, not even indicating any distress. His face was smoothed over and devoid of any expression, partially hidden underneath the respiration mask. His blanket had slipped to his waist during CPR and his raised white scars were visible again to the world.

Roy traced them with his eyes, memorizing every place on Ed's skin where some butcher had dug a scalpel through him. What looked like blistered burn scars circled Ed's throat where the metal collar had been hung. His gaze trailed down to the large, marbled scar on Ed's left side. It was pink and white, pinched oddly like it had healed strange.

What on earth could have caused that? Roy, without even moving, felt the spot on his own side that he'd self-cauterized. His own scar was larger, pink and patchy with the webbing that came from melting one's own skin.

They traveled in relative silence from then on. Even the prisoners that were the most awake and aware had finally succumbed to sleep, tucked into their stretchers by the soldiers minding them. Havoc was mimicking what Hawkeye had been doing earlier, smoothing back the hair of the patient he had been caring for. She was asleep now, curled up under the thick blanket.

It was about half an hour when Roy felt the bump of the truck hitting cobblestoned streets. He stood, turning to look through the window. Ahead of them through the windshield, Roy could see city streets and building laden with ice and snow. The cobblestones had snow built up in small patches, but most of it appeared to have been plowed and shoveled off to melt into the storm drains.

After a few minutes, Roy moved over to the canvas flap, hanging onto the wall of the truck for balance as he waited. Eventually, he felt the tell-tale sensation of turning into the U-shaped bend of a hospital emergency driveway. As soon as the truck lurched to a stop, he was pulling the flap open and hopping out of the truck bed. Behind him, he heard the sound of the tail gate being dropped. Voices began to call blearily out to each other, taking stock and voicing direction. Roy heard Hawkeye calling for order right as he jogged inside the hospital doors.

The lady behind the desk looked up as he entered, smiling at him professionally. Roy could see her looking over his uniform though, taking note of its bedraggled appearance with an increasingly worried eye. Her gaze turned to the window, where the two military trucks could be seen plain as day.

Roy was quick and sharp with his explanation, leaning on the desk for a bit of support for his tired feet. The receptionist's eyes widened when she heard the number of casualties and she picked up the phone immediately after. Roy didn't wait to hear what she was saying, turning on his heel and heading back out the door.

“First ones out of the trucks are the ones in worst condition,” Roy ordered, “Fullmetal first, then the ones that are still unconscious.”

It wasn't favoritism, Roy told himself. Edward had literally stopped breathing. He needed medical attention the most right now. He couldn't have any room for favoritism when every single one of these people had families or lives to go back to. It didn't stop the sick, churning feeling in his gut though as the hospital doors slammed open, and several emergency doctors came rushing out with gurneys. Edward was collected immediately on their arrival at the trucks, shouted orders to intubate Edward loud over the clamor of wheels on the cobblestoned drive.

Edward disappeared into the hospital almost as quickly as the doctors had appeared.

Roy wanted little more than to go into the waiting room and sit. That was how it would have been, wouldn't it? If this were one of Edward's typical stunts that had landed him in the hospital. Roy would wait in an uncomfortable plastic chair, eyes closed against the onslaught of worry. He wouldn't have anything he needed to get back to, or anybody else he needed to be concerned for.

Right now though, he still had over a dozen other prisoners to get taken care of, and then he had to start notifying families. He had to call Alphonse, Roy abruptly remembered.

Eventually, the trucks were emptied of patients. Most of them had remained asleep during the transfer from stretcher to gurney, but the last one (thank _God_ he was the last, thank _anybody_ for that small mercy) had woken up halfway through being put on the gurney.

And he'd screamed. He'd screamed in sheer, unadulterated terror, lashing out so violently that even the medics-- who'd had time to grow used to the panic, who'd seen the conditions from which these people had been rescued-- had recoiled away from him. They had barely managed to pin the terrified man to his gurney long enough to disappear past the double doors that lead to emergency care, and Roy had no doubt that they would either have to restrain him or sedate him.

That was... Roy couldn't get the queasy sensation to stop at the thought. It wasn't his fault. If the doctors here had seen the surgery room, had seen the hospital beds with the leather restraints and padded cells and straitjackets, they'd understand.

They would know soon enough, Roy thought rather bleakly. They'd see the surgical scars, and even if they didn't have the specifics, they'd be able to guess.

The trucks were packed back up, and Bloche's men all saluted Roy as they filed back into the carriers. No doubt they were glad that their part was over, Roy supposed, watching as the trucks drove away.

“Captain,” he said after a few moments of silence. His men were standing around him, close to the hospital doors, “If you could locate a phone for me? Lieutenants, I'm going to need all of our paperwork for our missing people. It'll have all the family and phone numbers we'll need, and--”

“Sir, with all due respect,” Hawkeye interrupted, and Roy turned a bewildered gaze on her. “...We've slept far more than you have. We rested up for the raid-- you stayed up planning and worrying. You need to go lay down. I spoke to the receptionist and she said there was a lay-back chair in the waiting room for ICU. Nobody is in there yet, so you'll have some time to get at least a few hours decent sleep.”

The gall of the woman, really. Roy honestly didn't think she knew what rank even meant half the time, though the way Havoc grinned at him spoke wonders about the man's respect for the chain of command as well.

“I slept on the truck--”

“You dreamed something about tea cozies,” Hawkeye replied, and Roy gave her an incredulous look, “You talked about it in your sleep. And your second nap didn't seem particularly restful either, especially not with the scare we had.”

“...I have to call the families,” Roy said tiredly, “They'll want to know immediately-- especially with their conditions.”

“I'm certain I know how to handle a phone,” Hawkeye replied.

“I have to call Alphonse.”

Hawkeye's eyes softened. Her lip twitched.

“I'll get a hold of him and have him come up here,” she said quietly, “And if you prefer to deliver the news yourself, we'll leave the ones that didn't survive-- and the ones still missing-- to you.”

That... was fair. Their families deserved to know, and they deserved to hear it coming from him. Exhaustion burned behind his eyes, and Roy knew Hawkeye was right. He could push himself and push himself, but eventually Roy knew he'd fall. He'd make a misstep, or a mistake. Somebody besides himself could get hurt.

“Alright,” he finally said, “Wake me up when you reach Alphonse?”

“Certainly,” Hawkeye promised, “He's either in Kessel or in Central, right? I'll make sure he gets to North City.”

Roy nodded, and the four saluted him as he walked away, following the hospital signs to the ICU waiting room. There was a recliner there as promised and the room was empty. A woven blanket hung on the arm of the recliner. He sat down and put his face in his hands for several long moments.

Alright. _Alright_. What he wouldn't do just to take a trip to the nearest bar, but he knew better than to try right now. There were a million and a half ways to sneak out of the hospital, but Hawkeye would no doubt find out. She was giving him a reprieve to get some real sleep. If-- or better yet, _when_ \-- she found out he'd snuck out to drink, she'd put him up against a wall and shoot him herself.

Roy removed his heavy greatcoat, shaking off the snow and ice built up in the fur trim. He tossed it over the back of the chair, then huffed a sigh when it slid backwards and landed somewhere between the chair and the wall. Yanking each boot off and tossing them to the side, he fell back against the recliner cushion, shoving the lever back to lay mostly flat.

After a few minutes, Roy turned on his side. It felt like a lead weight slid out of his spine as he relaxed, leaving behind a burn in his muscles that ached pleasantly, like a massage after a long day. He'd regret sleeping in the recliner, later when he would awake, stiff and sore, with an unshaven jaw and worn out expression. He would feel unrested, like he'd aged a hundred years in a space of a few hours.

But it would be worth it, wouldn't it? Roy crossed his arms tight over his chest, closing his eyes against the bright lights glaring down from overhead. It would be worth closing his eyes against the exhaustion, against the anxiety and fear battering at him from all sides, against the image of Edward's wrecked body disappearing into a puddle of blood--

\--Roy shuddered. He couldn't think about that now. The only thing he could allow himself to do was desperately cling on to the thought that Ed was alive.

Nothing else mattered.

Roy fell asleep. He went under within minutes, bypassing dreams and the lazy fog that came with drowziness and early sleep. The blackness that came after felt like it was barely seconds long before a hand on his shoulder pushed him awake.

Roy rolled on to his side, squinting blearily up at Havoc's frowning face. At some point while he was asleep, someone-- probably Hawkeye-- had spread the blanket over him. The one window revealed darkness outside. Roy felt his back protest-- just as predicted-- and his hair flipped over his face as his cowlick had apparently gained control over his head.

One look at Havoc's face though, and Roy didn't care if a full beard had sprouted on his chin.

“What happened?” he rasped, throwing the blanket aside and sitting up. The recliner jerked forward, nearly spilling him out onto the floor as he reached, half-blinded by the grit in his eyes, for his boots. An ice-cold thought struck through him and he froze. “Did Fullmetal--”

“...The little Boss is fine,” Havoc replied, shaking his head to dispel this fear as quickly as it had occurred to Roy, “...As fine as he can be. They've got him stable and we can go see him now, if we like. It's just--”

He hesitated. Roy stared at him unblinkingly.

“...We can't find Alphonse.”

Hawkeye had-- because she was a saint, albeit a tyrannical one-- called the families of the prisoners and informed them of their conditions and where they were. She had called at Kessel and at Roy's house for Alphonse first, but being unable to reach him, she'd called back later. And again, and again, until she was certain that Al was in neither location. Calling Gracia and Sheska had revealed no information, and neither was major Armstrong able to assist.

Several hours and some chewed out city officials that Roy had personally dragged out of bed later, Roy finally figured out that Alphonse had attempted to buy a train ticket out of Kessel to Mardon. The trains hadn't been running though, but Roy had no doubt that if Alphonse thought he had a lead, he would head there come hell or a life-threatening blizzard.

Roy called the bank, uncaring that he was rousting officials out of bed. After waiting for a bit, he was relieved to learn that Alphonse had purchased two rooms at a hotel in Mardon. Hanging up on the grouchy bank manager, Roy found the name of the hotel in the phone book and called.

The hostess sounded fairly irritated with being woken and was sour with Roy at first instead of directly telling him the information he needed. Upon hearing his rank and the equally irritated tone of his voice though, she confirmed that Alphonse and his chimera entourage had checked in and were there, and went to fetch his wayward charge down.

Roy sat and waited, fingers rattling on the table impatiently. At his side, Hawkeye was sifting through the paperwork left over from what she had gotten done for the day. As promised, she had left the files for the dead and the missing for him to go over.

The phone rattled, static crackled, and Al's worn out voice sounded over the phone.

“... _Hello_?”

 

* * *

 

 

Al hadn't been expecting the sharp rap at the door. He didn't move though, mood too bleak to contemplate moving from the bed. He'd gone to Mardon with higher hopes than the ones he'd had for Kessel, and after trudging through a nasty snowstorm the whole way, he'd hoped his efforts would pay off.

Of course, he was just being jerked around.

The two missing people hadn't really been missing. Or at least, they were only missing to their parents and the local police. Alphonse had found them rather quickly, in fact. The alchemist was an seventeen year old boy and the girl was sixteen and their parents wanted them to have nothing to do with each other, so just like appropriately dramatic teenagers they had run away.

To the boathouse by the nearby lake, which was as far as they had gotten before the snowstorm set in. They'd packed _sandwiches_ of all things, and clearly a few days trapped in a boathouse had made them reconsider their Run-Away-to-Central-City plan.

Ed probably would have thrown his hands up in disgust and threatened to leave them. Alphonse nearly had, so close to despair that it nearly seemed like a good idea. They were out of their sandwich rations though, and clearly quite done with their adventure. Al had swallowed his bitterness down and escorted them to the police station.

He'd wanted then, to just head back to Central and hide in his bedroom at Mustang's house. Unfortunately, the trains weren't running, and Darius and Heinkel were not in the mood to go trudging through the snow. Al was counting the days when they'd get sick of the travel, get sick of his moods, just get sick of the letdowns. They had lives too. They didn't have to follow him everywhere, keeping him from his harebrained ideas-- like walking through a blizzard.

That had worked well enough when he was a suit of armor. Now was a different story.

There was a harder knock on the door.

“Mister Elric?” the voice of the hostess was muffled through the wooden door, “You have a phone call. It's from a General Mustang, and he sounds quite irate.”

Al cringed, but still heard the “ _and is a bit of a dick”_ muttered by the hostess under her breath. He'd tried to call Mustang multiple times, but there hadn't been any answer to the office or the house. With a final, beleaguered sigh, Al kicked his blankets off and went to the door.

The hostess stood out in the hallway, clad in pajamas with her arms wrapped around herself to stave off the cold. Her mousy brown hair was a nest around her head, and she'd set her glasses so far down her nose that Al rather thought she looked like a hassled librarian.

“I'm sorry,” Alphonse said, at the same time she apologized. He rustled the energy for a smile. “Is he on downstairs? I imagine he isn't happy with me if he's calling this time of night.”

“He doesn't,” the hostess deadpanned, stepping out of the way as Alphonse tiptoed barefoot out of his room, mindful of the other people staying there and definitely mindful of Heinkel and Darius, who could hear a pin drop if they were so inclined. Heading downstairs, Alphonse found the phone sitting off the base on the counter top of the reception desk. With a deep sigh, he picked the phone up and brought it up to his ear.

“...Hello?”

“ _I wasn't informed that you were leaving Kessel_.”

Yep, Mustang was angry. And tired. And irritated. Al remembered the way his brother sounded when he was going on days of no sleep, had learned the cadence of exhaustion all too well.

“I couldn't reach you,” Alphonse started, trying to defend himself. He was already regretting his 'better to ask forgiveness' idea. “Nobody would pick up at the office, nobody would pick up at him-- anybody that I _did_ reach gave me the run around--”

“ _\--You should have gone back to Central then_ ,” Mustang countered sharply, then he released a deep, gusty sigh, “ _...That's not the point though. Alphonse--_ ”

“--Where are you, anyways?” Al replied, not quite ready to back down, “I couldn't reach any of you guys _at all_ , and--”

“ _Alphonse--_ ”

“--and I've walked through a blizzard, couldn't find anything. My lead was a total dead end too, both in Kessel and Mardon—”

“ _Alphonse, we found him._ ”

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for your rockin' comments. Sorry this chapter took so much longer than all the others; had some personal things go down and took care of it. :) As always, pay attention to the tags, guys, and thank you so much! Any art I make for this fic can be found [here.](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au)

 

 

 

 

Alphonse was going to be sick.

The car slammed and rattled, bouncing over the rough road beneath its tires. Alphonse cringed and wrung his hands tightly in his lap, feeling his shoulders bump against Heinkel and Darius with each pothole they hit. Nerves twisted up inside him as he stared out the windshield ahead of him. Outside, the sky was cloudy gray and pale, and the falling snow was giving the wipers a workout.

 _We found him_.

Mustang's voice rang out in his head for what felt like the millionth time since that phone call. Mustang had given him a very basic explanation, and sent a military car for him and his chimera friends. Unwilling-- and _unable_ \-- to just wait in Mardon, Al had dragged Heinkel and Darius out of bed and got them started down the road. They had met the car halfway, although the look on the driver's face said he'd rather be literally anywhere else that wasn't a snow-driven road.

 _We found him_.

Al wiped sweat from his hands onto his trouser pants. It all felt... very anticlimactic. He'd expected a giant battle, and explosions, maybe even an inhuman creature calling himself God. That was how things involving his brother had a history of turning out.

Instead, he'd gotten a quiet “ _We found him_ ”, a basic explanation-- the watered down You're-Not-Military-So-Not-Privy-to-Everything story-- a ride, and an ominous, final note of “ _He's in bad condition. You might want to hurry._ ”

What was that supposed to even mean?

Was Edward injured? _What had happened?_ How bad was bad? Would his brother die before he even got to the hospital? Was he dead now, as they barreled along the snow-covered road? Was everything Alphonse had done so far completely pointless?

Al pulled his foot up to the cushioned seat and rested his head on his knee. He had a pounding headache just behind his eye, and sleep felt so far away now. Thankfully, they'd passed a city limit sign earlier, and the mile markers were ticking by with smaller and smaller numbers.

A large hand was laid on his back. Al didn't look up at Heinkel, not until something was pressed into his hand. It was a biscuit wrapped in aluminum foil.

“From the hotel,” Heinkel explained, eyes placid behind his spectacles, “...You should eat something.”

Al's stomach was cramping from hunger, but it was churning with nerves and fear too. He was afraid he was going to throw up, but he knew he needed to eat. Carefully, he unwrapped the biscuit. It was cold and dry after hours in Heinkel's pocket, but as he began to eat, his appetite came roaring back and he chewed faster as he thought.

 _We found him_.

Al felt like a character in a trashy dime store novel, like someone whose entire subplot had been sideswiped, and his arc completely forgotten. He had been left behind in a chapter somewhere at the beginning while someone else had rode ahead and fought his antagonists for him. There was no satisfying conclusion for him, just a poorly crafted plot device, rolled in on a silver platter to tie up the loose strings.

The biscuit crumbled in his fingers and he coughed, choking a little on the dry bread. On the other side of him, Darius pulled out a canteen of water and handed it over. Al cleared his throat, looking back up through the windshield. The biscuit had filled the ache inside him, but it sat like a stone in his stomach as he saw the rooftops of North City come into view on the horizon.

_You might want to hurry._

The fear was back. Al crumpled the aluminum foil up and shoved it into his pocket, then put his face in his hands. He couldn't watch, waiting, as the city slowly came into view. It would feel like it was taking far too long.

“Are the city roads clear?” Darius grunted, knocking what sounded like his knuckles on the window, “...Or at least better than this one?”

“Yeah,” their driver muttered, “They've been keeping the inner city plowed, thankfully. Shame about the trains though. Would make things a lot easier on everybody.”

Heinkel grunted. Between the three of them, he was the one that disliked the driving snow the most, and was the quickest to put his foot down when it came to going around on foot and camping. Al managed a wobbly smile into the palms of his hands. Heinkel was like Ed-- always grouchy in the cold and the damp.

Al listened as the road gradually turned smoother and more well kept after, and then after what felt like forever, into the cobblestoned streets of North City. Al looked up, blinking blearily against the light. Tiredness crept on him like an insidious monster, like it threatened to drag him under once and for all, but he steadfastly ignored it-- and his headache-- as he watched street signs go by. Some people were out and about, hands held out to walls to keep from slipping on the new layers of ice that had built up overnight on the sidewalks. Dirty, oil-stained snow was piled up on the edges of streets, having been freshly plowed shortly before their arrival.

They passed an overturned cart, somebody's crates and goods scattered out onto the street. Al felt bad for the cart owner-- ordinarily, would have stopped to help-- but today was hardly ordinary, and his mind was dwelling only on one person.

Finally, they turned off the main street and the hospital appeared from between two buildings. Al felt his heart sink like a rock. He abruptly regretted eating the biscuit as his stomach flipped inside him and he felt his earlier nausea return full force. Al stared at the austere brick walls as they drove down into the circular driveway, bold and clean white next to the darker buildings on either side of it.

The driver pulled the car to a park in front of the hospital entrance. The man started to get out-- presumably to open the door for them-- but by the time he had gotten his seatbelt off, Darius had already kicked his door open and was getting out.

Al felt a pang of guilt for the two chimera. The military car hadn't been chosen with a lot of comfort in mind, and was pretty small for two men of Darius and Heinkel's size. He slid out behind Darius, and Heinkel climbed out shortly after. Al smiled at the driver through his window.

“Thank you very much for all your help,” he said politely, making sure to smile in spite of how weak he felt. “I'm sorry for all the trouble it must have been for you to come get us.”

“Aw, sh--” their driver rubbed his neck, pulling his seatbelt back on, “It's no problem, sirs. Take care.”

The car puttered away a minute later. Al watched it leave-- sure that he had left a friendly impression in spite of his less than congenial entourage-- before he slowly turned to look back at the hospital.

“With how fast you dragged us out of bed, you'd think you'd be sprinting right now,” Darius grunted after a moment, hands shoved into the pockets of his greatcoat. Snow was collecting on his shoulders. “Not gonna find out anything just standing here staring at the door.”

Heinkel tapped the top of Al's head with one finger. Al looked up at him.

“It'll be better to just go in and find out,” he rumbled, “...Just sitting out here means you're wasting time.”

_You might want to hurry._

Alphonse nodded numbly, willing himself to move his leaden feet. His brother was in this building somewhere-- whether he was in a hospital room, or in a body bag in the morgue. Or he could be close to being in a body bag, and Al was waiting uselessly there in the drive instead of being there at his side.

Al pushed open the glass doors, flanked by Darius and Heinkel, and stepped up to the welcoming desk. The receptionist that looked up at him looked a little bit harassed, but smiled sweetly at him regardless. There was some trepidation on her face though, at the sight of the large men that loomed behind him.

“Hi,” Al greeted, leaning against the desk and smiling. “I'm sorry to bother you. I'm here to see my brother, Edward Elric? I don't know what room he is in.”

“Well, let's see...” the lady began flipping through her log book. Her smile began to fade as she continued turning pages before reaching the end of the log. She turned back to the front and started again, and Al watched with a sinking despair as she bypassed the 'E' section of the log without finding his brother's name.

“General Mustang called me,” Al said, his voice wobbling a little. What did his brother not being in the log meant? Was he already...? Did he not make it in time? “Does that help?”

The receptionist let out a huff of relief.

“Oh yes,” she said, setting the logbook aside and picking up a nearby clipboard. She scanned it quickly, and Al could just make out “E. Elric” scrawled there, along with a list of other names. “Alright. Why don't you take a seat; I'll call General Mustang to let him know you're here.”

Al looked up at her from his inspection of the clipboard.

“...Can I not go up and see my brother?” he asked. Her smile grew a little thin.

“I'm afraid not,” she replied, “... General Mustang is overseeing the POWs and their families. He'll be down to speak with you shortly.”

Alphonse hesitated, almost meekly went to take a seat in the waiting area. On a second thought though, he turned back to the receptionist.

“Can you tell me--” he hesitated, “General Mustang said he was critical, when I talked to him. Is he-- Did I make it on time?”

Was his brother still alive?

The lady's expression softened, and she rattled her fingers on the clipboard for a few seconds before picking up the telephone at her elbow. She pulled the rotary around a few times, then waited.

“Hey, Stephany, can you tell me the status of a patient? Number 3768B, E. Elric?”

There was a pause, then the receptionist smiled, thanked Stephany, and hung up the phone.

“He's still in the ICU, but he's considered stable now,” she clarified, and all of the stone weight in Al's body suddenly became featherlight, and his knees turned to jelly underneath him. “If you'll wait, General Mustang or one of his men will be down to speak with you first before taking you up there.”

“Okay,” Alphonse said, very agreeable now, “Thank you very much.”

He stepped away from the counter and headed over to the waiting area. A young, tired looking woman was already sitting there with two small children on either side of her. One was asleep against her mother's side, and the other was nose deep in what appeared to be a story book. Alphonse took a seat in the tiny little plastic chair across from the small family. Heinkel and Darius squeezed into a bench nearby, shoulders bumping against each other as they fit into the seat together.

Al was grateful for the breathing room. Hours in the car, and with everything weighing in on him and nerves still roiling like a current beneath the surface of a placid river, Al was glad for the chance to just take a deep breath and try to let all the tension pour out of him.

Ed was still alive. Better yet, Ed was _stable,_ which meant Al wasn't panicking while sitting in the waiting room. He wasn't imagining his brother sliding into death while he sat uselessly downstairs. He wasn't picturing the moment of being lead down into a morgue, wasn't picturing Ed laying silent and cold on a metal table.

There was a garbage can between the arm of his chair and the wall. Al pulled the balled up aluminum foil out of his pocket and threw it away. This done, he started tucking his legs up underneath him, prepared to wait for his eventual escort to his brother's side, then--

\--the double doors opened. Al's head snapped over and he jumped to his feet at the sight of Mustang. The man looked... ground down. Worn, like a dishrag that had been wrung out and gone through the wash one too many times. Shadows were painted in dark colors under his eyes and his hair was a bit messier than usual-- his various cowlicks a little more evident to the world at present. Even his uniform, though his pins and color bars were placed as impeccably as usual, had a ragged quality to it that spoke of a few nights spent sleeping in it.

Dark eyes found Alphonse, standing in front of the chair he had just vacated. Before Al could speak, before he could even think, Mustang's gaze had turned away, and the man ghosted past him without a word. Al's indignant protest died in his throat when Mustang headed over to the young woman that was seated with her children.

“Mrs. Bentrick?” he asked quietly, and the woman slowly rose, mindful of her two sleepy children. “My name is General Roy Mustang. Are you ready to see your husband?”

“Yes,” the woman said, so quick and firm that she looked startled with herself for a moment. She smoothed her dress shirt down a bit, “I-- it's been two years. Is he--”

Is he _what_? Al wondered, his mind running away with him for a split second. Hurt? Injured? Traumatized? What was Ed, right now?

“...It might be wise to leave your children outside the room first,” Mustang replied after a beat. “My staff is on hand to assist.”

With that, the general lead the small family out of the waiting room. On his way by, he made eye contact with Alphonse again and nodded in his direction before disappearing back out of the double doors.

Al sat down.

It wasn't personal, he told himself, though his heart was still clenched in his chest. Mustang _could not_ show favoritism, not here. He could not put Ed above other people, no matter how much he wanted to. For one, it would raise a few eyebrows among the generals that heckled and harassed him constantly. The fact that Mustang had opted to attend this mission instead of staying behind his desk was probably already causing waves among the brass. It wasn't the behavior of a model general.

The second point was that Edward would never forgive Roy for treating him with favoritism over other people. If anyone died while their families were waiting in the lobby, Al knew his brother would carry that guilt on his shoulders forever, and blame himself and blame Roy instead of placing that blame on the people who had caused this situation to begin with.

Alphonse waited patiently, thoughts circulating as he stared at the small coffee table in front of him until he heard the double doors open again. When he turned to look though, it was Captain Hawkeye standing there, and not Mustang. She looked just as tired as her commanding officer, several loose strands of blonde hair slipping free of it's clip. She walked over at a brisk pace in spite of her obvious exhaustion, and Alphonse found himself standing again.

“Alphonse,” she greeted him warmly, sherry brown eyes looking over his equally disheveled appearance. “It's good to see you. Everyone was worried when we couldn't find you in Kessel.”

Al flushed a little at this reprimand wrapped up in a greeting.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized again, “...We had a lead and I didn't want it to slip away... in case. But it sounds like I went on a wild goose chase for nothing.”

“The general will explain what happened a bit better once he's reunited all the families with the victims,” Hawkeye promised, reaching up to squeeze his arm reassuringly. “We know you're not military, but you've always been a bit of an exception around the office. You'll get the full story, but for right now what you need to know is that we found him in a Drachman controlled prison.”

“Here in Amestris?” Alphonse asked, shocked, “How--”

Hawkeye's closed off expression made him stop.

“Classified, right?”

“For now,” she replied quietly, glancing over her shoulder. The receptionist sat nearby, seemingly engrossed in her logbook, but Al knew better than to chance being eavesdropped in on. “You can come on up. One at a time, though; he's not in good condition.”

Al looked back at Darius and Heinkel. Darius held up a dismissive hand.

“We'll come up and say hi a bit later,” Heinkel grunted, “Go spend some time with your brother.”

“I--” Alphonse swallowed the knot that had closed up in his throat. “--Thank you.”

With that, Hawkeye lead Alphonse out of the waiting room. The double doors swung shut behind him, leaving behind the cozy, warm feeling of the lobby and entering the sterile, cool feeling of the hospital hallways. Doctors and nurses walked past, ignoring the soldier in their midst.

How many victims were there, for the presence of soldiers leading families around to be so familiar that they could walk around him as though he weren't a strange presence? Al couldn't imagine.

The back of Al's neck prickled and he turned, looking anxiously around himself. He had gotten accustomed to Darius and Heinkel always nearby, protecting him just by being as large as they were. Very few people wanted to pick a fight with men of their size, even if Al's innate sarcasm got him into trouble on occasion.

Now though, he felt very small, and very helpless as Hawkeye lead him down halls and up stairs. Finally, they reached a door labeled 'ICU' and Hawkeye pushed it open, ushering Al into this new wing of the hospital. His eyes immediately shot over to where Breda was sitting outside of one of the hospital rooms, entertaining the two children from earlier.

He looked up as Al and Hawkeye approached. Something anxious and unreadable passed over his face, and he looked back down without making eye contact with Alphonse.

The relief he had felt earlier wilted inside of Alphonse. As they passed by, Al glanced into the narrow window on the hospital door. He couldn't see the patient, hidden by the bent back of the woman from the waiting room. Standing at the foot of the bed, Mustang was talking, voice muffled behind white walls and the heavy wooden door.

They went by this room, moving to the end of the ICU wing. Hawkeye stopped at the final door, glancing very briefly through the window before looking back at Al. With a grim look, she laid a hand on the door knob.

“I'm sure the General warned you, but I'd like to iterate that he's not in good condition,” she said cautiously, “...He's not awake either... He's been tortured, and I don't you to be shocked at his appearance.”

“I just want to see my brother,” Alphonse said, trying to keep his voice as firm as his words. In reality, he felt weak and nervous, trepidation coursing through his bones and winding tightly in his spine. “ _Please_.”

Hawkeye dipped her head after a moment's pause, gave him a searching look, then opened the door and ushered him inside the room.

The first thing Alphonse was aware of was the hissing of a ventilator. The pump moved up and down with each artificial breath, both the noise and it's physical presence filling the room.

The next thing Alphonse noticed was how _small_ his brother was. He was covered in wires, tubes, and hoses, the oxygen mask covering most of his face. His automail was gone, making him look even more shriveled under his hospital blankets. The empty spaces where his limbs ought to have been were glaringly noticeable. His skin was a sickly white color, littered in bruises that were yellowed and aged in some places, and dark blue in the spots where IV needles were taped down to him. His eyes, still closed, were swathed in purple shadows and sunken in to his thin face.

Al slowly rounded the bed, angling around the ventilator as he did until his back was to the wall. He didn't look away, never letting his gaze leave his brother as he did. He was distantly aware of Hawkeye talking behind him, but couldn't hear her words over the loud ringing in his ears as he came up to Ed's head.

He raised a hand and placed it on Ed's forehead. His brother's skin was cold. Life and warmth had been bleached out of him, nothing like the vibrant gold that he'd been when Al last saw him at the train station a year and a half ago. Al remembered hugging him, faintly remembered the solid strength and warmth of Ed's body as he had hugged him back, recalled the scent of leather and machine oil and the shampoo of his freshly washed hair. Al, freshly returned to his body, had cataloged these sensations in his brain.

Now though, Ed barely looked as solid as he had seemed that day. He looked like he'd fade away at any moment. The only thing Alphonse could smell now was antiseptic.

Al raised his hand to touch Ed's hair. It hung limply, oily and unwashed, and it was matted up in knots that indicated its lack of care. It had gone from a rich wheat gold to dishwater gray.

“He hasn't woken up yet since we found him,” Hawkeye was saying, and Al finally tuned her in, not looking away from his brother's sleeping face. “...He stopped breathing at one point. The doctors are going to want to talk to you, of course, but they've already spoken with the General. They've talked about the possibility of brain damage, or that-- that he might not wake up.”

How was that for a twist? Al scowled a little, feeling his chest clench tightly. He had his brother back-- in body, at least-- but what if he didn't wake up? What if he just succumbed slowly, wasting away in his hospital bed for the rest of his life? What if Al never _really_ got his brother back, just an empty shell that didn't move, didn't speak, didn't even _breathe_ on his own?

A hand was laid on his elbow. Al finally tore his gaze away from Ed and looked up into Hawkeye's kind, but worried, expression. Her brows were furrowed, her sherry brown eyes searching his face as she looked at him.

“I'm going to give you some time with him,” she said quietly, “And then I'll send the doctor in here too. The General will be by when he's done speaking with the Bentrick family. Alright?”

 

Al couldn't bring himself to speak, so he nodded slowly. When Hawkeye did as she said and left, the door closing behind her with a soft _click_ that seemed loud in Al's ears, he turned to look back at Ed.

His eyes hadn't so much as flickered. He looked _dead_ , like a corpse animated only by the mechanical rise and fall of his chest. Al found the chair behind him and scooted it up closer so that he could sit and watch his brother's face for any other sign of life. True to Hawkeye's word, Alphonse had about twenty minutes of alone time with his still, silent brother before there was a knock on the door. A moment later, the door pushed open and a doctor in a white coat came in.

The chatter from that point on just washed over Alphonse. Starvation, electrocution burns, organ damage, infections, the list went on and on, and with each new torment that Al learned of he started wondering desperately just _what_ had gone on in the prison.

Eventually, the doctor reached out and touched Ed's left elbow, which was hung in a cast.

“We had to operate on the bone here,” Dr. Frantz, as she'd introduced herself, explained. “At some point in his incarceration it was broken-- a blunt force break-- and healed in this position. We had to go in and re-break the bone and set it back in its proper position. If he makes it to that point, he'll need physical therapy to strengthen this arm back up.”

_If._

Al swallowed.

“...I... I was told there's not a good chance for that,” he finally managed, “...Getting 'to that point', I mean.”

Dr. Franz carefully put her clipboard down and sat in her stool, taking a seat across from Al on Ed's other side.

“I'm going to admit that, Mr. Elric, it doesn't seem like your brother has a very good chance,” she explained quietly, folding her slim hands on the side bar of Ed's bed. “But he's already beaten a lot of odds. He was resuscitated successfully, and that's actually a long shot when it comes to survival. He made it through surgery without a hitch. Those are pretty important milestones.”

“What kind of a chance does he have?”

“Of waking up? I don't know,” Dr. Franz said quietly, “He's already been on the ventilator for a little while. We're going to try and wean him off of it in the next few days, and if he can breathe on his own without it then he absolutely has a good chance of waking up. Now, whether there's been brain damage or not, we'll have to see when that happens. If he was deprived of oxygen for too long, he might have something as minor as a facial tic, or he might be completely unresponsive. He might be fine. This is the part of medicine where there's a lot of guesswork, I'm afraid.”

Alphonse was silent, watching his brother's sleeping face. He'd done that a lot, over the years. Ed usually looked peaceful in sleep unless he was having a nightmare, then his face was all screwed up, brows furrowed over clenched eyes.

Now though, Ed's face was just blank and his features slack. No peacefulness, no anxiety. All expression had been wiped clean by medication and whatever hellish torment he'd been through.

“And if... if he can't breathe without the ventilator?"

Dr. Franz pursed her lips. Her gray-blonde hair was coming out of what had previously been a neat little bun, similar to Hawkeye's. He wondered, distantly, how many miles she'd walked already that day, if she was pulling overtime between all the patients from the prison. How many times she'd delivered bad news that day.

“...If he can't breathe without it, then we may need to consider some... other options,” she said carefully, “...If it comes down to it, you're his next of kin, and also the one listed as his medical proxy. We're not there yet, but it's possible you would have to make the decision whether or not to continue his life support.”

“We won't get there,” Al said, the words tumbling from his mouth before his brain could even catch up. It was that automatic, wasn't it, to assume that his brother would survive? That he would pull through every disaster, with a couple new scars and a few new stories and another nightmare to add to the list of the ones he already had? Al shook his head. “Brother's strong. If he's made it this far, he'll go the whole way.”

Dr. Franz smiled, albeit thinly, and stood.

“I certainly hope so, Mr. Elric,” she replied, then turned to the door. “I'll leave you together, then. Normally visiting hours are over at nine, but you're welcome to stay in here with your brother while he remains asleep.”

Al wondered how normal that concession was before nodding at her. She left, and Al was left alone again. He watched his brother's sleeping face for several long minutes, searching for any sign of awareness, before letting his gaze wander. There were new scars on his brother's face, cutting deeply over his nose and his cheek. His neck was bandaged all the way around, so Al couldn't see what was there, and as his eyes drifted down he was amused to note that Ed had at some point during his imprisonment sprouted some fine blonde chest hair.

As Al's gaze lingered on Ed's chest, he saw some scar tissue peeking out from under the sheets. It was too raised, too mottled and new to be automail scars, so Al reached out and began tugging the sheets down.

His stomach turned at the white scar across Ed's front, a Y-sectional cut that went from just below his collarbone and stretched all the way to his navel. He reached out and nervously traced it, careful of the medical tape that held different monitors and needles to his skin. The scar was ridged under his fingers, tough compared to the skin around it.

Al abruptly remembered the biology texts he and Ed had perused while researching the best way to bring back their mother. To make a human, they had to know how a human worked. The woodblock prints of the human body inside their books all had the same shaped incision on their bodies, the flaps of skin stretched open and all the organs inside diagrammed out and labeled for study.

Al pulled his fingers back as though he'd been burned. Before he could keep railroading down his train of thought, consider the implications and the idea that someone had _cut his brother open for study_ , the door rattled open.

Mustang stood there, looking for all the world like he was trespassing. Under his arm was a folded up cot and several blankets.

“I rather thought you'd need a bed to sleep in,” he said quietly. His eyes shot down to where Al had pulled the hospital sheets back, exposing Ed's scar to the open air. “Ah.”

“What happened?” Al demanded. It was all bubbling up at once, all the stress and the fear and the confusion and the no-explanations and the lack of sleep and-- “--What did they do to my brother?”

Mustang looked tired, looked worn out to the point that Al felt a small pang of guilt at slinging the question like an accusation, like one of Hughes' old throwing knives, but he was tired too. He hadn't slept either, and everyone _missed_ Ed too but Al was the one left with a gaping hole in his absence.

The man stepped the rest of the way into the room, closing the door behind him and setting the folded up cot down and rested the blankets on the counter

“...I'm don't know how to begin,” he admitted after a moment's silence. Al felt his exhaustion twist up into anger.

“You can _explain,_ ” he snapped, fists clenched, and it felt wrong to be yelling in this tiny room, over his brother who needed all the peace he could get, so Al lowered his voice, “It'd be a start. It would be more than what anyone else has given me right now.”

Something like guilt clouded Mustang's features for a split second before he took a seat in the doctor's vacated stool. His dark eyes drifted down to the miserable scar that spanned it's way down Edward's middle like a mountain range. After a few moments, he started talking.

A few minutes in, Alphonse sat down, letting everything wash over him as he listened to Mustang. His fingers curled defensively over his brother's scarred skin as Mustang told him about the cells, about the morgue, about the surgeries, about the _straitjackets,_ about the other prisoners that alternated between silence and screaming.

About the fact that ninety percent of the people that had done this to his brother were free still, lost in the wind, beyond the border of Drachma, beyond all reproach.

When Mustang's voice finally wound down, Alphonse was left holding his head in his hands, forehead resting against the sidebar of Ed's bed. Had he really _wanted_ to know? Was this any better? Knowing even just a fraction of what his brother had suffered felt like taking on the weight of the entire world; what would he do with the rest of it? The idea that there was _more_ , that he was getting information in chunks and large pieces meant that Ed had individual experiences, had hundreds upon hundreds of abuses heaped on him that he would have to handle when he was awake, _if_ he woke, and--

\--a large hand was laid on his shoulder. Alphonse didn't realize how bad he was shaking until he felt the steadiness of Mustang's palm. The strength in the man's grip though, wasn't enough to keep the first tears from falling, wasn't quite enough to help him dam up the heaving breaths he was struggling to take. The hand began to rub his back soothingly as he started babbling through his tears

“I just, _I can't--_ ” Al sucked in a breath. Wall by wall, brick by brick, everything he'd built to hold up the burden of Ed being missing was now being crushed under the weight of everything Ed was when he was _found_. “ _Why—_ I don't understand--!”

He didn't understand. He was supposed to have found his brother, they were supposed to be able to go home together. They could go to school and grow up and everything would be _okay_ again, because even though Al hadn't been able to hold on to his promise of fixing Ed's limbs, at least he could hold on to that _hope_ \--

“Because people are cruel,” Mustang replied, his voice soft, “Because governments will tear through individuals for a bit more power, no matter how many other people they leave devastated in their wake. Because if leaders can keep power in a cage, they would. Because people look away when they ought to speak up. I'm sorry.”

The tears came down even harder. Every wound that he had sewn shut over the last year and a half was now open again, raw and open to the world. They hadn't healed beneath the stitches; they'd festered, until it felt like he was rotted out straight through his core.

Arms circled around him, cautiously, like Al would stab him with their defenses lowered so much. Al didn't though, burying his face into the rough wool of Mustang's uniform, ignoring the braided cords digging into the side of his face. He hung on, clinging like this was the only safe rock in a turbulent sea. He was wracked with each shuddering sob like a forceful gale.

This was nothing like a dime store novel, where crystalline tears trailed down cheeks without leaving streaks or red marks, no mention of the snot and the mottled red puffiness that came with crying. Al's eyes were bloodshot and gummy by the time he caught his breath, not the “glistening orbs” that he'd shamelessly read in so much purple prose.

Mustang's sleeve was damp, dark with his tears. The man himself had collapsed his head sideways against the wall at Al's back, the dark lines under his eyes more prominent now that they were closed. He wasn't asleep though, and he shifted and looked down at Al as the younger man's cries petered off. His expression wasn't as closed as it was before, but it was still careful as he looked Al over.

“You look like a wreck,” he said quietly, “I know it's still early in the day, but why don't you at least try and lay down for now? I'll find you a towel to clean your face. Some sleep will help.”

Al took in a shuddering breath. Mustang was right-- all of the weight was crushing in on him, and he was exhausted from holding it up for so long. He watched, limply, as Mustang released him and went about setting up the cot in the space between Ed's bed and the wall. Something niggled in his brain even as he pulled his shoes off and sat down on the cot.

“Heinkel and Darius want to see him too,” he managed after a few tries to clear his throat. His voice was raspy and trembled up and down. “The doctors said one at a time.”

Mustang grabbed the blankets off the counter and ushered Alphonse into laying down, spreading the brown quilt over his shoulders.

“I'll work something out with the doctors,” he said quietly, “Don't worry about it. You don't need to worry about the technical things right now, alright?”

Al swallowed thickly, swallowed down the next bout of tears that threatened to come up. A few stray ones beaded up into the corners of his eyes, spilling out onto the pillow under his head. Before he could say anything else, before he could speak, Mustang had laid his hand over his eyes, blotting out the hospital room for a moment. Ordinarily this would have made him jerk back, would've made him suspicious and nervous and jumpy, because when he was a suit of armor his vision was often all he had and that still carried over, but now--

\--now he was too tired to fight. He laid limply on the cot, listening.

“I know this is hard, and it's only going to get harder,” Mustang murmured softly, very near to him, “Things will get worse before they get better, trust me. But I want you to know that you're not by yourself, alright? You have everyone here. We're all here to help. This is not a responsibility that only you have to carry. Alright?”

Al nodded softly against his pillow. Mustang removed his hand and whisked across the room like a ghost, stopping at the door to dim the overhead light. Al watched him leave, then turned his eyes up to Ed's bed. His brother slept on, unaware of pain and misery, and Al wondered, for a brief, horrifying second, if that was maybe the kinder option for him.

He quashed that thought, squeezing his eyes shut tightly against it. It wouldn't come to that. It _couldn't_. With these thoughts circulating it typically would have taken Al ages to fall asleep, but he drifted off almost immediately. He was woken a little while later, when a warm wet towel was rubbed against his face. He sleepily tried to help, mopping away the streaks of tears and crust from his eyes before he fell back asleep again.

Al woke up again, distantly aware of Heinkel and Darius' voices overhead. He didn't _quite_ make it to full wakefulness, choosing instead to slip back beneath the dark quiet that sleep provided. At least in sleep, the world could stop throwing things at him, could stop moving too quickly for him to catch up with all the hurdles.

Eventually, everything would stop hurting too.

 

* * *

 

 

Hawkeye took one look at him and knew exactly how well the conversation had gone.

“Is he alright?” she asked, then gave Roy a keener look. “Are you going to be alright?”

“No, and maybe,” Roy replied honestly, setting aside the towel he had used to clean Al's face. He could still feel the younger man in his arms, could still feel the weight of his body shuddering under the force of grief and confusion. He looked at the towel for several long moments. “It'll be hard on him, the next few days, depending on what happens. Make sure he's never by himself too long.”

“Of course, sir.”

“...Don't...don't let him see the other victims, either,” Roy added after a moment, “I don't think it's a good idea right now. He needs some hope, not... that.”

He didn't need to see his brother's probable future. He didn't need to know that Edward might wake up but be bound for another prison entirely-- a psyche ward. Another straitjacket, another padded cell.

“...Yes, sir,” Hawkeye drummed her fingers on the desk. The hospital had given them leeway to use an empty office near the ICU-- although they were all fairly certain that it was actually a closet for unused furniture. Nevertheless, it kept their paperwork in order. “General Minsk called.”

“I know he did,” Roy sighed. Exhaustion was seeping into his bones and it was still morning yet. “Of course he did.”

“Do you want me to call him back for you?

Roy looked around, found the coffee machine they had 'appropriated for official use” which was also known as “stealing from the first floor staff break room”, then calmly poured himself a cup. Ignoring the equally appropriated creamer and sugar, he drained the coffee straight.

“No,” he said firmly after gagging that mistake down, “No. I'll go to North City Command and speak with him personally. His son is missing and he deserves a face to face.”

Kendrick Minsk. Kendrick Minsk and Muric Banner. Their two missing State Alchemists. They could be dead, for all Roy knew, or maybe they'd been moved across the border? Maybe they were working with the Drachmans. The facility could only have been built by alchemy. It wasn't a stretch to think of that, and one of them being the son of a decorated military officer was something to raise eyebrows at.

“Of course, sir,” Hawkeye said quietly, “I'll have a car waiting for you. I'll make sure someone is near Alphonse at all times.”

Twenty minutes later found Roy standing in front of General Minsk's office, Havoc at his back. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

“Can't be any worse than everything else, Boss,” Havoc pointed out. “Just another parent.”

“A parent with no answers. At least the ones that got a body back know what happened,” Roy murmured. He reached up and knocked firmly on the wood door, waiting until he got a quiet “Enter” before opening the door.

General Minsk was not a large man by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed like the last few years had taken its toll on him. The last time Roy had seen him he had been strong and confident, shoulders straight and proud. He wore himself like a war hero ought, Roy supposed, looking at the rows and rows of color bars that covered the man's chest.

Now though he looked tired, half-bent over his desk with his phone pressed to his face. His shoulders were not nearly as straight as before, bowed against the weight of his son's absence. His dark eyes were lined with stress now, and his black hair had gone nearly solid gray.

Minsk looked up and immediately hung up his phone with a clatter of bakelite against metal. Roy nearly paused, considered saluting, then simply stopped in front of the man's desk. Havoc hung near the door at attention.

“All this talk of you being in North City and this is the first I've seen you?” Minsk growled, standing behind his desk. “Every time I call, I get your Captain instead of you!”

“I apologize, General Minsk,” Roy said quietly, folding his hands firmly behind his back. “...I didn't intend it to happen. Getting the freed prisoners and their families organized was an ordeal.”

Minsk's breath seemed to stop short in his chest.

“So they're found,” he said quietly, “Since I haven't been called to the hospital, I suppose you're delivering me some bad news?”

His fingers were clenched on his desk. He looked angry, looked like a wild animal ready to attack. Roy had seen enough of this over the past few days to know that it wasn't the truth though-- that the anger and frustration were a pillar to keep oneself upright.

He'd just watched Al's pillar crumble, after all.

“No news, I'm afraid,” Roy said quietly, trying not to drag this out, trying to cut straight to the chase when it felt like a million words couldn't explain what had happened. “...We were able to successfully find the missing alchemists, dead and alive, except for your son and another State Alchemist by the name of Muric Banner.”

“Missing?” Minsk slowly sat back down, “Still missing? You found bodies? Kendrick isn't--”

“--I'm afraid I don't know,” Roy continued quickly, “We don't know where either of them are at. It's possible they're alive and have been moved to another location, it might be that their bodies were simply disposed of differently.”

Minsk looked--

\--lost. Like he'd seen the shore but was still at sea. Roy felt his stomach clench.

“I'm sorry,” he continued, “...I haven't rested yet. I don't plan to until we work out what's happened.”

“You said there were other prisoners?” Minsk asked, his voice distant. His gaze had settled on a photo sitting on the corner of his desk, no doubt a picture of Kendrick. “Have you questioned any of them?”

Roy winced.

“The way the prison was set up, it doesn't appear that the prisoners had any contact with each other. If they were even aware that there were other prisoners, I'd be amazed,” he explained, “...And many of the survivors are in bad shape. The prison was largely abandoned due to the lack of supplies, and people were left to die in their cells. A lot of them are heavily medicated or unconscious. Questioning isn't really feasible until they're roused.”

“Of course,” Minsk nodded, falling back into his chair and looking like he'd aged ten years in ten minutes. Even his face had gone gray. “...I'm sorry if I came off as hostile. I'm just...”

“...You want your son back,” Roy finished, dipping his head, “...I've seen it, sir. No need to explain.”

He thought, for a second, to ask. To ask if his son had ever had any contact with Drachmans, if he'd ever expressed dislike for his military. If Kendrick Minsk would have a want or a need to betray his country.

Roy turned away.

That would wait. Roy could do his own research later, without upsetting an already devastated father.

“I'll keep searching,” he promised, “For now, I have to return to the hospital. If anything changes, if any new scrap of information lands in front of me, I will inform you immediately.”

“I want Focke returned to North City,” Minsk said abruptly, and Roy turned back, eyebrows raised and feeling a bit railroaded at this sudden request. “I know he's been your personal gofer since his fuck up, but I think it's time he was brought back to face a proper punishment.”

“Punishment?”

“Not a firing squad, if that's what you're thinking,” Minsk said, his voice clipped as though he bitterly regretted the option wasn't available, “He'll face a tribunal. Put in a good word for him and it might make the difference between an honorable and a dishonorable discharge.”

“...Of course,” Roy replied quietly, then turned back to the door. He didn't wait for a goodbye or a dismissal as he headed out of the office, shutting the heavy door behind him softly.

“Could have gone worse,” Havoc murmured, looking as though he desperately wanted a cigarette. He followed close behind Roy, looking uneasy. “I expected a lot more shouting.”

“Could have gone better,” Roy countered,”I could have had something to give him. A son or a body. _Something._ ”

“Not your fault, Boss.”

The rest of the trip back to the hospital was made in silence as Roy brooded. Entering the double doors of the hospital brought them face to face with Hawkeye again, who was seated in the lobby and speaking to an elderly woman. She looked up as Roy entered and stood, immediately walking over to her commanding officer.

“This is Miss Banner,” she said quietly, “...Muric Banner's aunt. She's his only relative and the one that raised him, apparently. No other family.”

“Thank you,” Roy said softly, moving around her to head to the little plastic seats that every hospital seemed to share. He sat down awkwardly in the one across from the little old woman. She was tiny under her crocheted shawl, silver-gray hair curly around her face. She squinted up at Roy through extremely thick glasses, then immediately held out a framed picture. Roy took it, smiling slightly at the picture of a newly graduated Muric Banner, awkward and gawky inside of a newly issued military uniform.

“It's the most recent picture I have of him; I'm so sorry,” Miss Banner explained quickly, “I hardly saw him anymore after he enlisted. Oh, he called all the time, but the army had him up and down the country.”

“That's alright, Miss Banner,” Roy said quietly, but took the frame anyway. He had a more recent photograph in Muric Banner's file, but sometimes it helped relatives if they thought they were helping. “I know you've probably heard that we found a lot of the missing alchemists--”

“I paid a young man to drive me up here. The trains weren't running, you understand?” Miss Banner explained, “Can I see him? Can I see Muric?”

Her expression was so lifted, her lined face so happy, that Roy was loathe to destroy her hopes. He swallowed and set his shoulders.

“I'm sorry, Miss Banner,” he explained, watching as she went from excited to crushed in an instant, “We found a lot of the alchemists that were kidnapped, but we didn't find your nephew. Muric is still missing.”

“...Oh,” she whispered, lowering her head. “Oh.”

“We're still searching,” Roy continued quickly, “We're not done just because we found this lot, do you understand? We won't rest until we have everybody safe back home, and that includes Muric.”

Roy didn't mention the likelihood of her nephew's death. He didn't mention the suspicion of collusion. There was no point bringing that up here. No point in further hurting someone who already ached.

“Miss Banner, do you have someplace to stay for the night?” he asked quietly, “Here in North City?”

“Oh, I--” she fumbled with her small handpurse. “-Yes, yes. I called ahead to the hotel. I'll have to pay when I get there, is what they said. I asked for the double bed, you see? I was hoping Muric was coming home...”

“I understand. I have your number still, and now I have another photo. When we find him, we'll call you immediately,” Roy said quietly, reaching down to his hip and tugging his watch free from his belt loop. He handed it up to Havoc, who was still hovering nearby. “See that Miss Banner gets to her hotel room safely, and that it's paid for. She shouldn't have to pay.”

“Yessir,” Havoc said, taking the watch and tucking it into his pocket. He rounded the chair and offered a large hand to Miss Banner, who took it gladly. She and Havoc hobbled out side by side, and Roy slowly fell back into his seat. He closed his eyes.

“I need a drink,” he said quietly.

“And it's only eleven,” Hawkeye replied, then released a huff of breath. “Major Karr's family has had him released to their custody. They're taking him from the hospital today to bring back to Central City.”

“Keep tabs on where they take him,” Roy murmured, not opening his eyes. “Whether it's to a psyche ward or holed up somewhere in their manor. We might need to talk to him in the future.”

“Of course, sir,” Hawkeye murmured, “And the Martin family is here. They're waiting for you downstairs.”

Downstairs. In the morgue lobby, just outside the viewing room. Roy blew out a deep breath before slowly climbing up to his aching feet. Straightening his uniform, he bullied his spine into some semblance of straightness, reaching up to try and smooth his messy hair.

It was only eleven, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

Al slowly pried his eyes open. It was dark in the hospital room, and quiet-- save the slow hiss of the ventilator and the soft beep of a heart monitor.

He felt grimy. Like he hadn't showered in days. And, well, he hadn't. His face still felt a bit crusty, and his cheeks heated up when he remembered just why his eyes and nose were all gross. Pushing the thought of crying his eyes out on Mustang's shoulder out of his mind, Alphonse sat up and looked over at his brother.

Still asleep. His eyes were still closed, and he looked just as small as he did before. With a squeal of the cot springs, Al slowly climbed to his feet, reaching across his brother's bed and tucking the hospital blankets in around him, making sure to cover the ridged scar on his brother's front. Al would never want him to be embarrassed of it, never to feel ashamed of his scars, but he also knew how fiercely defensive Ed was of his personal space.

He wouldn't want other people looking at him, so Al made sure to tuck the blanket in right. His eyes fell on his brother's left shoulder, where the number “31” was burned into the skin.

Bile rose in his throat and he turned away. He left the hospital room, shutting the door behind him with a soft _click_.

“Hey.”

Al nearly jumped out of his skin, whipping around with a hand clenched over his chest. Breda was sitting in a chair beside the door, a book in hand. He looked tired, but was grinning when he realized he'd nearly scared Al half to death.

“Hey,” he said again, standing up and shoving his book in his pocket. “The General asked me to wait for you to wake up. We got some takeout for you in the office.”

At the mention of food, his stomach rumbled inside of him, and Al glanced at the nearby clock. It was nearly eleven at night now, which gave him pause. He'd slept for twelve hours, which felt like a massive waste of time. He could've been helping, maybe. He could've have been doing _something_ , anything--

Al hesitated.

“Do you know where I can find a phone?” he asked quietly, “I need to call Winry and the others. They'll want to know.”

Breda lead him to a small nook where there were several payphones, and Al took a seat, slipping in the cenz he needed and turning the rotary.

The phone rang several times, the answering silence stretching over several long moments. Finally, just when Al was raising his hand to the coin return slot, there was a soft clatter and a hitch, then--

“ _Atelier Garfiel, Winry Rockbell speaking_ ,” there was a yawn, then a clearing of a throat. “. _..Is this an emergency?_ ”

“Hey Winry,” Alphonse said, “Haven't talked to you in a while.”

There was a pause, then Al heard the rustle of Winry sitting down. He imagined she was in her pajamas by now.

“ _No, you haven't,_ ” she confirmed, her voice soft. “ _...Are you alright? Has anything new come up?_ ”

Al felt his throat close. How could he explain to Winry how bad Ed was over the phone? He was suddenly sitting where Mustang had been the day before, talking over the phone to Al in Mardon. He coughed, then swallowed, trying to force out what felt like glass shards in his throat.

“...Yeah,” he managed roughly, “...Yeah. We uh...I think you should come to North City.”

“ _North City? Al?_ ”

“We found him.”

There was silence, not unlike the thundering silence from before, when Mustang had uttered those three words to him. Al remembered the wild, crazy roar of his thoughts, remembered thinking he had heard Mustang wrong, that he'd finally lost his mind from the stress of the search.

“ _What?_ ”

“He's here in North City,” he rasped, “...The North City Hospital. I—It'd probably be a good idea if you came. He's not in very good shape, and--”

He swallowed, aware of Breda standing nearby. He wasn't sure if the man was eavesdropping or not.

“--could really use you here, y'know? I know the trains aren't running, but--”

“ _\--I'm on my way,_ ” Winry's voice was firm, “ _I'll be up there as quick as I can. Don't worry about me, alright? You take care of you, and you take care of Ed, okay? And I'll be there. Is there anything you need me to do or bring?”_  

“I don't--” Al swallowed again, “The doctors took off his automail, I don't know what he needs with that. I guess everything you can fit in a toolbox...Can you call Granny? I doubt she'll be able to make the trip, but she'll want to know.”

“ _I can_ ,” Winry said, and Al heard someone-- Paninya-- talking in the background. Winry covered the mouthpiece and murmured something Al couldn't make out. “ _I'll call her. You just sit tight for me, okay?”_

“Okay,” Al replied, “See you soon.”

They said their goodbyes, and Al pulled some more change from his pocket, pushed it into the slot, and turned the rotary again.

The wait was shorter this time.

“ _Curtis Butchery_ ,” came the low grumble of someone who'd just laid down, “ _Sig Curtis speaking.”_

“Hi Sig,” Al said, absently playing with the rotary, ticking it back and forth just shy of clicking off the connection. “...I'm sorry to call so late.”

 

“ _Al_ ,” Sig replied, managing to sound a little less annoyed now, “ _...How are you? Do you need to talk to Izumi?_ ”

“If she's not already asleep,” Al said, “And I'm doing fine, thank you for asking.”

He was fine. He was absolutely fine. He could handle this.

“ _One moment,_ ” Sig said, and there was a long silence as the phone was sat down. Al imagined Sig, slowly making his way down the hallways of the Curtis household. He remembered, from when he was small and still a student, the sound of the floorboards creaking and groaning under his weight as Sig opened up the shop every morning.

There was a rustle, a huff of breath, and then the phone was picked up.

“ _Alphonse_.”

It was amazing, in spite of the fact that she had never been given a real chance at being a mother, how much Izumi was like Trisha Elric. Her voice was just as warm, and Al remembered being hugged by her as child. Izumi was made of more muscle, harder angles and rougher hands, and she squeezed just this side of suffocation instead of with the sheer gentleness that his own mother had held him with, but--

\--the idea was there. The sense that Izumi loved and cared for them was just as real.

And it was amazing that she could convey all that feeling in a single word.

“Hey,” Al managed, tapping the rotary with a finger, “Hey, Teacher.”

“ _...You found him._ ”

Al choked on his own spit. Winry could not have called up that fast—would Winry even have the number--?

Izumi sighed.

“ _You're not calling me up, sounding heartbroken at nearly midnight, to ask me for a good pulled pork recipe,_ ” she stated, then her voice softened up again, “ _How is he? What happened?”_

And Al spilled. He told what he could, filled her in on what had taken place. Told her of Ed's condition. She had the good sense not to go questioning too deep into the military-aligned parts of the story, asking basic, informational questions. She was an alchemist, and a genius onto her own, and Al knew she was building the picture in her head.

“ _And how are you?_ ”

“Fine,” Al managed, then huffed, “Okay. Handling it. I don't know. They're talking like he's not going to make it--”

“ _He's going to make it._ ”

“You can't-- You can't say that when you haven't seen--”

“ _\--Don't tell me what I can and can't do,_ ” Izumi said sharply, “ _He's going to make it. I didn't train quitters_.”

“He might not have to quit,” Al whispered, “The doctor talked about cutting his life support, Teacher--”

“ _And you're not going to let them,_ ” Izumi said, firm and sure, “ _You're going to fight for every second of your brother's life. Isn't that what he's doing right now? If he's in such bad condition and he's still alive, then he's fighting for it and you need to make sure he has the opportunity to pull through. When he wakes up, are you taking him to Central or to Resembool?_ ”

Al would have stumbled if he'd been upright.

“--I haven't been able to think that far ahead.”

“ _Start doing that_ ,” Izumi said, sounding a bit smug with herself, “ _He's fighting now, but he's going to need all the help he can get when he wakes up. And you're going to have to step up and think ahead for what he's going to need._ ”

“...Okay,” Al managed. “Okay.”

“ _Your brother lost a leg and his only concern was fighting for your life,_ ” Izumi continued, and Al felt his gut twist. “ _You better return the favor here. I know it's tough, I know it's going to feel like you're failing every which way, but you've got to give him a chance to survive. Understand?_ ”

“...Yes,” Al barely managed again, as if she hadn't just yanked out all his insecurities and used them as ammunition, “Yeah.”

“ _Call me when you two are settled, and I'll be up there._ ”

And Al--

\--smiled. Let out a laugh that came in a weak, broken huff.

“Okay,” he said, “ Yes, Teacher.”

There was some more talk, some goodbyes, and Alphonse finally hung up. He turned to see Breda still perched nearby, casually watching the night shift doctors and nurses go by. Al rustled up the energy to smile at the larger man when he turned to look at him.

“How about that takeout?”

A few staircases and hallways later found Alphonse in an office.

Or a storage closet. Alphonse eyed the piled up furniture with trepidation, but there was a takeout box sitting on the only open desk, and a coffee machine with “First Floor Break Room” written on it in permanent marker. Mustang sat nearby, hunched in a small plastic chair as he went through reams of paperwork. Hawkeye and Havoc were nowhere to be found, but Al had no doubt they were somewhere in the hospital.

Mustang looked up as Al entered, and managed to favor him with a thin smile.

“Hey,” Al greeted him, popping open the lid. The smell of Xingese takeout wafted into the small 'office' as he did. Al stared at the heaps of noodles inside, his stomach rumbling dangerously. He tapped the styrofoam lid with a couple of fingers. “I uh, I wanted to say... um, I'm sorry--”

“--Don't,” Mustang said, tilting his head slowly as he watched Al. The lines under his eyes were more pronounced than they were when Al had seen him that morning. “You don't have to apologize. You don't have to be sorry for being upset.”

Al hesitated, nodded, then picked up the disposable chopsticks that came with his meal. Snapping them in half, he sat down across from Mustang and began to hungrily eat. Mustang continued his paperwork and they sat together in silence for a long while.

“Have you thought about you're going to do now?” Mustang finally asked, and Al had to force himself not to stop halfway through slurping down a noodle. “If it comes down to it--”

It was easier than he thought, now.

“No,” Al said firmly, holding on to the conversation he'd just finished having with his teacher. “It won't. I won't let it happen.”

Mustang was silent, and Alphonse could feel the weight of his gaze on him.

“Brother fought for me,” he continued, keeping his voice steady. “So I'll fight for him. For every breath he needs. I won't let him just... die.”

Mustang didn't reply for a long time. Alphonse continued eating, chasing around the steamed beef and broccoli with his chopsticks. For a brief moment, he wondered where Darius and Heinkel went.

Probably to a hotel room, he figured. Sleeping on little cots and chairs wasn't really an option for men of their stature. They had also, technically speaking, finished their goal. Ed was found, so they didn't really need to shadow him anymore. It was entirely possible that they were already making plans to head out.

Somehow, this gave Alphonse a little pang, like a small well of loneliness. He'd gotten used to the two chimera always being around.

“Alright then,” Mustang finally said, and Al looked over at him with raised eyebrows. “Alright. When he wakes up? Do you have any plans?”

“...Not yet,” Al said softly, “I know we can't stay up here in North City. I don't know-- if maybe I should go back to Resembool with him, maybe? Or maybe even stay in Central City, but we can't stay in your spare bedroom forever, and Brother's going to need a lot of help...”

He trailed off at the look on Mustang's face.

“I don't know if you've considered it,” Mustang said slowly, like he was stepping into dark, unknown waters, “...But the doctors have mentioned the possibility of brain damage, or he might be... _different_. Are you sure a hospital won't be the best place for him?”

Al's brows dropped.

“You mean locking him back up ,” he said flatly, “Putting him in a loony bin.”

“It's not a _loony bin_ ,” Mustang replied quickly, sharply, “A psyche ward isn't a 'nuthouse'. I'm just saying, if he's-- if he's not the same, if he's gone violent--”

“He isn't a _feral animal_ ,” Al snapped back, stabbing the last chunk of beef with his chopsticks to punctuate himself, “I'm not-- I'm not letting my brother go _back_ into a straitjacket! What good would that do him? How is that the best place for him!? I'll take him out of the country before I let _anybody_ sign my brother over to be shoved back in a cell against his will!”

He'd half stood during this, and Mustang was now watching him with something darker behind his eyes, something warier. Al flopped back into his seat and shoved the beef into his mouth. He chewed slowly before speaking again.

“I won't let him suffer anymore.”

There was silence again.

“--I apologize--”

“--I'm sorry--”

They both looked at each other, and Mustang released a deep breath.

“...It was a... It was not a good suggestion,” he said quietly, “I'm sorry. I'm tired, and some of the patients are—at least, I'm very certain that the psyche ward is going to be the only place for them. But you are Fullmetal's brother, and you of all people would know what's best for him.”

“I shouldn't have snapped,” Al replied quietly, “I'm sorry.”

“You don't--”

“--I do,” Al replied firmly, tucking the takeout box away.

Mustang tapped his fingers on the desk.

“Whatever it is you choose to do, whether it's spirit your brother to the seaside or stay in the country, my house is always open to you both,” he said quietly, “You can continue using the spare room for as long as you need.”

Al managed a wobbly smile at him.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “That means a lot.”

He looked at the piles of paperwork Mustang was going through.

“Anything in there I can theoretically help with?”

“A fair bit is classified,” Mustang murmured, clicking his pen several times as he looked back at the file he had been holding the whole time. “And most of it needs my signature.”

“Coincidentally,” Al began brightly, picking up a nearby pen, “Brother and I-- and this is in no way related to the large amount of restricted documents and books we've managed to acquire through the years-- have somehow managed to pick up the ability to forge your signature perfectly. It's entirely inexplicable.”

“A mystery, I'm sure,” Roy deadpanned, reaching over and selecting a section of paperwork to hand over. “If you so wish, on your head be it. Take it back to the hospital room though-- I suspect when your brother wakes up, he'd prefer you to be in the room and not somewhere else. Bring it back when you're done.”

Al took the large stack, standing and heading to the door.

“Alphonse.”

He turned and looked back at Mustang. The man's dark eyes were steady and calm, in spite of the fact that he looked rather like he'd been dragged backwards down the hospital hallways. His cowlicks were nearly sticking straight up in the air.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he said quietly, “We're all here for you. You're not on your own with this.”

Al--

\--smiled.

“Thanks, General,” he said softly, and stepped out the door to head back to his brother's side.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone keeping up with my [tumblr](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au) probably already knows this, but the reason this took so long is because my computer abruptly did a fail and corrupted my first attempt at this chapter when it was at 11,000 words. Since it's 14,000 words total... you guys can do the math. Had to write SO MUCH over again. >__>
> 
> As usual, watch the tags and enjoy!

He wanted to breathe.

It was hard to even try. Every lungful of air was a labor, one that left him more and more exhausted with every attempt.

And then suddenly, he couldn't pull any air in at all, the sharp painful heaving in his lungs quickly giving way to the relief of sheer _nothingness_ , like he was floating, like the darkness he was trapped in was finally drowning out all the pain and--

\--then he was able to breathe again. A sharp pain knifed through his chest at the first breath, and each one afterwards was just another struggle that left him sinking further and further into darkness. Broken-edged memories rippled through him, confusing and dizzying, and the faint shadows of nightmares flickered in the corners of his eyes.

He couldn't fight it; he couldn't scream or struggle away. Every time he made an attempt at reaching out, at pulling himself out of the darkness, another wave crushed him back down, suffocating and silencing.

Sometimes, he heard voices. They were distant, too far away to hear properly, and it was too hard to breathe to try and call out to them.

Too exhausted to keep fighting his way up, Ed let the veil of darkness fall over him again, blotting out the light of wakefulness.

* * *

 

“ _-_ _It is true, without any error, and it is the sum of truth; that which is above is also that which is below, for the performance of the wonders of a certain one thing, and as all things arise from one Stone, so also they were generated from one common Substance, which includes the four elements created by God.”_

The ventilator hissed, low and long in the quiet of the room. Alphonse paused and looked up from his book, holding one finger on his spot. Beside him, his brother lay still and quiet as he had been for the last few days. His eyes stayed closed. The purple bruises that had ringed his nostrils had faded to a yellow, and his skin looked marginally less sallow than it did when Al had first laid eyes on him.

Al let out a deep breath, leaning back in his seat. He was careful not to lean back so far as to upset the piles of books he'd stacked up on the side table behind him. Ed had been scheduled for a sponge bath the day before, and while carefully maneuvering him around (something that had nearly given Al a heart attack), the attending nurse had chattered away. It was mostly just idle talk, but then she had started talking about how comatose patients often reported being able to hear their surroundings while they had been asleep.

Reading to them had helped alleviate their boredom, was what the nurse had said, and she didn't know-- couldn't know-- how that had made Alphonse's insides freeze up.

His brother had been locked in a tiny, windowless cell with nothing to do, no stimulation except for that of torture and pain.

The idea hadn't sat well with him, that his brother could be laying there aware of everything, but unable to do anything, unable to interact with anybody or speak up for himself.. The thought had made Al panicky and anxious. As soon as Ed's sponge bath was done, he had ran to the nearest bookstore-- with Havoc in tow, because Mustang's men were apparently babysitting him now-- and bought as many different alchemy texts as he dared to on Mustang's dime.

Content that nothing had changed, Al looked back down at his book.

“ _\--And among other miracles the said Stone is born of the First Matter. The Sun is its Father, the Moon its Mother, the wind bears it in its womb, and it is nursed by the earth. Itself is the Father of the whole earth, and the whole potency thereof. If it be transmuted into earth, then the earth separates from the fire that which is most subtle from that which is hard, operating gently and with great artifice.”_

Al read quietly, doing his best to ignore the ventilator and the rhythmic beeping of the monitors that kept track of his brother's vital signs. Beside him, nestled underneath the hospital blankets and tucked away from the cruelty of the world for at least a little bit, Edward slept on.

The day moved on without them. Nurses came and went, changing Ed's bandages and doing checks on his vitals. Some stayed a minute or two to chat, but Al was mostly uninterested in conversation, though he tried to be polite about it.

Dr. Franz came in around noon to give a status update, and to check his oxygen levels. Over the past few days, they had lowered the strength of the ventilator, carefully weaning Ed off of it, and the doctor had gone from being unsure of Ed's chances, to being cautiously optimistic.

“He's doing well,” Dr. Franz said, giving Al an encouraging smile, “His lungs appear to be operating on their own. We'll keep lowering the ventilator to make sure they stay strong and healthy. If he continues doing well, he should be able to breathe on his own here soon.”

“You took him in for a scan yesterday,” Al replied, waiting for the bad news--- for the other shoe to drop.

“He's got some moderate kidney damage from the lack of urine output, but thankfully his liver's managed to escape relatively unscathed. I _am_ concerned about his bladder,” Franz replied,”He's got a severe infection-- you might have noticed we started him on some fairly strong antibiotics after his scan. When he wakes up, we'll get him on a regiment of pain medication too, because he is definitely going to need it. What we absolutely don't want is the infection spreading to his kidneys and causing more damage to them.”

“How bad are his kidneys?” Al asked weakly.

“Not as severe as they could be,” Dr. Franz continued, “Currently, he's not at risk for dialysis, and with proper antibiotics and care, he'll be perfectly capable of living a normal life. There's no real way to reverse kidney damage, but if he maintains a healthy diet, exercise and takes his medication, then they won't get worse. The main concern currently is keeping his bladder infection from spreading, and getting his weight back up so that his kidneys are functioning.”

She looked at her clipboard, then slipped it into her coat pocket and crossed her arms.

“A lot of what's wrong is fixable if he gets his body back on track,” she explained, “It's not going to be an easy road, nor a short one, but it is something that's achievable. He'll be in bad shape for a while, and he'll absolutely have to take medication for the rest of his life, but your brother can have a healthy, normal life after this. He's just going to need a bit more care, and a lot of support.”

Al nodded, swallowing down the bitterness in his throat that his brother shouldn't _have_ to need this, that it was unfair-- Ed had paid his dues twice over, this wasn't something that should have happened.

“You mentioned his heart, yesterday,” he asked quietly, instead of screaming out loud.

“Another side affect of starvation. His heart rate is abnormally slow, and so his blood pressure is low. As he puts on weight this will change,” Dr. Franz cast a sideways glance at Edward. “It doesn't look like there's too much damage to his heart, so he might have been rescued just in time before it began to happen. Time and medicine will tell.”

Al took a deep breath.

“There's-- they did surgeries on him,” he said, stumbling over the words. He didn't want to call them 'surgeries'. The word 'surgery' implied a necessary medical operation, something meant to help and heal and cure. What they did to his brother was anything but. “...I think-- General Mustang seems to think they just looked at him, but-- did they? Did they do anything to him? Inside?”

“I think General Mustang was correct in his assessment,” Dr. Franz replied softly, “Nothing in his scans indicate that there was anything taken out of him, and there isn't any internal surgical scarring that would indicate any alterations were made, nor is there anything foreign inside his body. Nothing showed up as being unusual besides the starvation damage to his organs.”

Al heaved a deep sigh. At least his brother was spared that. Maybe they'd cut him open and studied, but hey-- they didn't move anything around, right? The fact that _that_ was a small kindness at this point made Al sick to his core.

They talked for a little while longer about scheduling and getting Edward started on the regiment of medications that he would need. They also discussed his brother's diet, starting out with the mealy protein mixes that they'd been tube feeding him and when they would try to start him on solid foods. With this optimistic bit of news passed on, Dr. Franz took her leave, and Al picked his book back up.

“ _Thus the Stone is generated from the first substance, which contains the four elements; it is brought forth by two things, the body and the spirit; the wind bears it in its womb, for it carries the Stone upward from earth to heaven, and down again from heaven to earth.”_

He continued on like this for another two hours or so, until a knock at the door had him sitting up in his chair. A moment later, Falman and Fuery, both looking rather windswept and tired, appeared in the doorway. Fuery had a big streak of grime over his nose.

Alphonse smiled, genuinely glad to see them. Fuery smiled back, big and bright until his eyes drifted over and found Edward laying in the hospital bed. His expression dimmed considerably.

At his side, Falman just looked sick, like he knew exactly what he was walking into.

“Hey,” Fuery said quietly, stepping up to Ed's bedside after Alphonse gave them a permissive nod. He rested his hands on the side bars of the bed, looking down at Ed's sleeping face. “...He looks...”

He trailed off, unable to find a word to describe it. Al wasn't really sure there was one.

“He looks better than when he first came in,” he replied, looking over at his brother. Beneath the plastic ventilator mask and the mess of tubes and wires everywhere, Ed looked somewhat peaceful finally.

At least, Alphonse thought, somewhat bitterly, there was that small consolation. Ed wasn't in pain right now, and that was currently the best thing that had happened to him in a year and a half.

“Does he?” Falman asked, finally shuffling up to the bed. His skin was tinged gray and there was something odd in the set of his mouth that Alphonse couldn't quite place. “What has the doctor said?”

Alphonse relayed what Dr. Franz had told him earlier. Some of the news was disheartening, the idea of any part of Ed being damaged beyond repair was hard to think about, the potential that he might be bedridden or sick for the rest of his life was beyond belief. Ed was a live wire, always active and always bright, a shower of sparks in the dark.

“But he does have a good chance now, though?” Fuery asked, his large glasses slipping down his nose a bit as he spoke. “When he wakes up. I mean, it's going to be a lot of work, but he's got good odds? Right?”

“Right,” Al said, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, “It's just... a matter of getting him to a good place before there's more damage.”

And nobody was really saying it, not to his face anyways, but they didn't really know _if_ Ed was going to wake up. He'd been unconscious for who knew how long, resuscitated once, and then unconscious again for days.

There was a good chance Ed could lay asleep in a hospital bed for the rest of his life.

“...So where have you two been?” Al asked, toying with the tassel on his bookmark. He slid it carefully between his fingers, feeling one of the threads unraveling when it caught the edge of his nail. It reminded him that he would need to clip the nails on his brother's left hand. They were long and jagged, unkempt after so long of being locked out of reach inside of a straitjacket. “I haven't seen you around, and General Mustang mentioned you two were busy.”

“We were gathering the evidence in the facility we raided, and helping deal with the prisoners,” Falman said, his voice curiously blank. “There's... a lot of evidence, and we were hard-pressed to get Major Bloche to let any of it go.”

“The prisoners?” Alphonse asked, keeping his voice innocent and choosing to gloss over the mention of evidence. He suspected he'd see that soon enough. “What's going to happen to them?”

Both Fuery and Falman looked over at him with equally unimpressed expressions.

“Don't do anything rash, and don't go looking for trouble,” Falman chastised, “The whole situation is already delicate. A civilian murdering a small contingent of Drachman soldiers isn't going to make it easier.”

“And a bunch of Drachman soldiers imprisoning and torturing Amestrian citizens does?” Alphonse sniffed, “I wasn't planning on doing anything, I was just wondering what was going to happen to them.”

“...They've been turned over to the custody of Major General Armstrong. If Drachma claims them I suppose negotiations for their return will start. If not, then they'll be imprisoned at Briggs until it's decided if they're going to be executed.”

Alphonse tried to feel bad about that-- Major General Armstrong was a torment he wouldn't wish on most people, and normally he would feel sick to his stomach about the idea of death as a punishment.

He looked over at his brother, silent and still, and couldn't bring himself to dredge up that usual feeling of resentment when it came to capital punishment.

“Are you staying here then, or is there any more for you to do?” he asked, looking back over at the two men. Giving them a more thorough examination, he could see that they looked dead on their feet, their rumpled uniforms indicating that they'd spent more than a few nights sleeping in their boots.

They didn't smell that great either, but Alphonse was a hair too polite to point that out.

“We're going to stop by and see the General,” Fuery replied, “He wasn't there when we dropped off the evidence earlier so he'll probably want a run down of what we got. It was enough to fill that office from floor to ceiling.”

“We'll be going to the dorm rooms right after,” Falman continued, “But we'll be back straight away in the morning so we'll be around. Lieutenant Hawkeye filled us in on the schedule so you'll start seeing us guarding your door too.”

Al opened his mouth, considering asking about that-- _why_ they were guarding his door specifically, if none of the other victim's families were being watched. Did they think he would slip out and go hunt down the people that did this? The thought was tempting, he would admit, but there was no chance in hell he'd leave his brother's side.

The dark, poisonous need to _hurt_ somebody curled up tighter in his gut, pulsing and angry.

He wouldn't leave his brother's side, at least not until Edward could take care of himself. If Mustang's investigation hadn't gone anywhere by the time Ed wouldn't need constant care, Alphonse had every intention of making the Northern sector of Amestris his personal hunting grounds.

“And anyways,” Fuery was saying, and Al tuned back in to what they were saying, “We should probably go see General Mustang by now. He's probably back in his office wondering about the towers of boxes we left for him.”

“Alright,” Al agreed, clearing his throat, “...Dr. Franz said she was going to try and take Brother completely off the ventilator in the next few days. He's been doing really well with it at partial power, but there's always a chance that he won't-- he won't be able to breathe on his own.”

There was a chance that he'd stop breathing. That he wouldn't be resuscitated in time. That these last few days would be the last time anybody could see Edward alive.

It didn't look like he needed to say any of it, because the looks on their faces told him they heard the implication loud and clear. Falman shifted uncomfortably inside his coat and Fuery shoved his hands in his pockets.

“When you find out when they're going to try taking him off the ventilator, would you let us know?” Falman asked, “We'll be here for you, if-- if it doesn't turn out well.”

“If it doesn't turn out well, and after too,” Fuery followed up, hunching his shoulders slightly under his coat. “You know we're all going to be here for both of you.”

The dark, simmering hate in Al's guts was nearly washed out by the flood of warmth he got from these words. As far apart and distant as Mustang's team had sometimes seemed, they had all been there time and time again. They'd stood beside him and Ed through everything, had watched them grow up. Al trusted that they wouldn't abandon him to his grief if his brother didn't make it.

“Thanks,” he said roughly. “That means a lot.”

He cleared his throat.

“I shouldn't keep you. The faster you talk to the General, the sooner you two can lay down. You guys look pretty exhausted.”

The three said their goodbyes-- with Fuery touching Ed's hand and wishing him well too-- and disappeared out the door. Al waited a few minutes to see if anyone else would come in, then picked up his book and re-opened it.

“ _Its power, or virtue, is entire, when it is transmuted into earth," he means that when the spirit is transmuted into the body, it receives its full strength and virtue. For as yet the spirit is volatile, and not fixed, or permanent.”_

Beside him, the ventilator hissed, and Edward slept on.

 

* * *

 

Roy eyed the towering boxes with trepidation, his heart sinking every time he spotted another one. At the rate he was going, he would need a larger office within the hospital if he was going to be able to look through everything.

“Is this everything?” he asked, after rounding the piles of boxes several times to look at them.

“As much as I could convince Bloche to let go of, sir,” Falman replied, his voice weary, “I suspect this is a fraction of what there actually was, but he was very particular about letting anything leave the facility.”

“I suppose that's why he was all too happy to see me off with the patients. There was nobody there to order him to hand over the evidence,” Roy growled, looking at several boxes that didn't seem to have lids. Inside were recording cylinders and records, and another box seemed to hold file after after file of photographs. “What are these?”

“Those are recordings of the interrogations and torture sessions,” Falman replied, “...Major Bloche and I listened to one. They're... disturbing, sir.”

Roy looked up. Falman's expression was pulled tight and his skin was ashen gray. He held himself in a huddled sort of manner, making sure not even the hem of his coat was touching any of the boxes. Like they were poisonous, like whatever horror that was contained inside them could be contagious and spread.

“The photos are extremely graphic as well,” Falman warned, then heaved a long, deep breath, “Most everything is written in Drachman. I was able to translate a small stack of files on the ride here to get started, but if you would like me to, I can get to work and have another few stacks done before sundown.”

Roy shook his head. With one person keeping Alphonse from storming off into the night and Focke at North Headquarters looking down the barrel of a dishonorable discharge, he had only one person helping him for the last few days. Fuery and Falman were a godsend, but both men looked like they'd been wrung out and stretched too thin.

“Don't worry about it, Warrant Officer,” he said firmly, looking over his shoulder at his desk. The translated documents were sitting there, rubber-banded together. He looked back at Falman. “Those will suffice for now. Go and get some rest; you've earned it. Just be back here in the morning so we can get a real start on these.”

“Thank you, sir,” Falman took one hesitating look around, saluted, then backed out of the small office. Roy heard Fuery speaking for a moment before the door swung shut. When their footsteps faded down the hall, Roy bent and picked up the box of photographs on the floor, moving it over to the desk.

Hawkeye, who'd been silent the entire time, seemed to uncoil from her place near the wall. She carefully stepped around the boxes, her eyes lingering on the box of photographs for several seconds.

“Is my schedule clear?” Roy asked, looking down at the box.

“...Yes, sir. Other than Winry Rockbell coming in, we aren't expecting any family members today unless there is an early arrival,” she replied, voice oddly hushed in comparison to her normal certainty, “Sir, the evidence can wait until we return to Central. Are you sure you want to do this right now?”

“No,” Roy replied honestly. “Not particularly. I'd rather not look, to be honest. It's bad enough, knowing Fullmetal looks the way he does because of _something_ they did. It's going to be harder knowing what that _something_ is exactly.”

Roy pinned down the flaps on the box, looking in. Everything was organized into folders, labeled with numbers all the way down. Roy traced them with anxious fingers, stopping at the file marked “31”.

There was silence in the room.

“But it's better if I do know,” Roy replied quietly, “It'll be better if I see. Closing my eyes and ignoring it is tantamount to saying it never happened. It wouldn't be fair to Edward if I didn't. It wouldn't be fair to any of them.”

Roy looked at Edward's file. It was heavy in his hand, weighted down by the horrors contained inside. After a few moments, he slipped it back into the box, then returned to the file marked “1”.

As with all things, he couldn't play favorites. Edward deserved justice but so did Benjamin Martin, Ian Northrup, and the many other victims of torture that had passed through the halls of that facility.

He pulled the file out and set it down on the table. Quietly, he seated himself at his 'desk' and flipped the file open.

 

* * *

 

 

Havoc rested his knuckles against the door.

He hesitated again. After a moment, he pulled his hand down and settled back on his heels, giving the sterile white hospital door a long, uneasy look.

“You know nothing's gonna happen if you're just gonna stand there and look at the door.”

Havoc scowled, turning to look over at where Breda was sitting in his chair on the other side of the door. The man had been at this post all day-- a fact Havoc knew, because he'd been the one to deliver him his breakfast.

“At least I'm here,” Havoc replied sharply, keeping his voice low enough he knew Alphonse couldn't hear him on the other side of the door. “Have you gone to visit the little Boss yet? You've been here all day.”

Havoc decided not to mention the half-dozen cigarettes he'd smoked out in the parking lot before steeling himself up to it.

Breda scowled right back at him.

“I've been on guard duty--”

“--You've been eyeing up the nurses all day. It wouldn't have been hard for you to go in and say 'hi' for five minutes.”

Breda snorted, crossing his arms and looking away from Havoc, not meeting his eyes.

“What's the point?” he finally huffed. “He's not awake. It's not like he can hear us. And besides, even if he doesn't-- even if he wakes up. You saw all the others. The screaming and the rocking. They're drooling on themselves. He won't be the same.”

Havoc eyed him. He knew Breda had been studiously avoiding Ed and Al's room, but he hadn't been too sure what was driving him to do so. It was fear, apparently, and uncertainty of the unknown. What Ed would wake up like, at the end of this. Would he be the same? Would he be the way he had always been, bright and loud and full of life?

Or would he be like the rest of the victims? Would he be silent and curled in on himself, not reacting to anything around him? Or would he scream and thrash and fight all contact?

“Whatever he's like, he isn't some stranger. He's still Ed,” Havoc found himself saying, “And that's a real shitty way to treat a friend. If it was you drooling on yourself, you know Ed would be right there at your bedside, wiping your face for you.”

Breda didn't reply, refusing eye contact. Havoc huffed a breath through his teeth, raised his hand and knocked. A second later he pushed the door open, and without another word to Breda, he stepped into the hospital room.

Alphonse looked up as Havoc entered. He smiled weakly, suddenly feeling the weight of the cigarette pack in his pocket. He tried to ignore it as he crossed the room and headed over to the bedside.

Ed looked better than the first time Havoc had visited, shortly after he'd been transferred from surgery to the ICU. His skin was paper-white still but there was a dusting of warm red across his cheeks that hadn't been there before, and some of the shadows under his eyes had faded.

Like the razor edge of a glass shard, a memory sliced through him-- Ed, laying wrapped in a straitjacket and covered in straps, silent and still on a body tray. Havoc blinked several times, clearing the image from his mind like it was a translucent sheet laid over the real thing.

“He looks better,” he commented, leaning back to look over at Al. Al was setting aside his book, and if Havoc's voice was shaking, he said nothing of it.

“He does,” Al agreed quietly, “The doctor said his chances are going up too.”

There was conversation then, about what Dr. Franz had said about Edward earlier that day. Havoc found himself nodding, looking back over at Ed. The sooner Ed could breathe on his own, the better. The mechanical rise and fall of his chest just seemed... unnatural.

Havoc watched him for several long minutes, his gaze turning towards Ed's automail port.

“He still looks too small,” he said, resting against the side bars of the bed. The metal was cool in his hands. “I guess it's cuz his automail is off. Y'know we-- the general and the rest of us, I mean-- we made pretty good use of how small he was as a kid? For as much as Mustang loves teasing him, getting him into air ducts to sneak into places made our jobs much easier.”

“He's never said,” Alphonse replied, smiling, “For obvious reasons, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I guess he wouldn't admit it,” Havoc laughed. “We shoved him through a window one time to go unlock a door on the other side of this old house we were raiding, right? Had a big hissy about just unlocking it with alchemy on the outside and the General wouldn't let him because it was dark and the light would catch attention. All we heard when he went through was banging, shouting, and the sound of chickens screaming. When he finally opened the door, he was all covered in feathers, eggs, chicken shit, and scratches because the whole front room was being used as a chicken coop and he'd fallen right through about thirty chickens and one pissed off rooster. I thought he was going to murder every one of us.”

“You know, that explains why he came back to the dorm room one night with feathers in his pockets and a chicken's nest in his hood,” Alphonse said thoughtfully, “He was in a pretty sour mood so I didn't want to ask him.”

“Yeah, I bet he was mad,” Havoc replied, reaching up and scratching his chin, “The whole car ride back to the dorm I thought he was going to reach around and tear Mustang's face off, especially after Captain Hawkeye wouldn't let him in the car until after we hosed him off.”

Al laughed out loud at this image, clearly imagining a spluttering, cursing Ed getting sprayed down with a water hose. He had set the book aside and was looking a little less like his whole world was ending.

When Ed was out in the field, Alphonse had always gone everywhere with him. Mustang had actually encouraged it at points, so sure of Al's ability to watch Edward's back through thick and thin. When they ran actual jobs and operations though, Al was often left behind in their shared dorm room. He hadn't seemed to mind back then, but now Havoc wondered how often Al had sat awake at night watching the door, waiting and hoping for his brother to come home intact.

Another memory, dusty and distant, lit in Havoc's brain, and he nearly opened his mouth to start relating it to Al. On a second thought though, he changed his mind, deciding to hang on to it for himself.

Mustang had almost always treated Ed like a colleague-- shorter and with less experience, but a colleague none-the-less. It had seemed, at least to Havoc, that the man never entirely noticed that Ed had been twelve years old. It was easy to forget-- Havoc had made the mistake several times, forgetting that Ed was a kid. When he could back you up in a fight, transmute spears from sand, had the strength of an industrial steam press, and was an all-around tough little cuss, it was easy to just _forget_.

One such evening they'd just gotten back to the office after a long, barely-successful job. They'd been up for night after night, had consumed far too much take-out and coffee to be healthy, and-- while they'd gotten their rogue alchemist, he'd caused a lot of damage on the way down. With tempers frayed, Ed and Mustang had started snapping at each other, except--

Except Mustang could get nastier. Could get harder and sharper and throw an insult like a knife in comparison to a kid who still fumbled over his curse words. And he'd said _something_ , Havoc hadn't heard because he'd just walked in on Ed looking fairly devastated, Mustang wearing an expression of immediate remorse, and a pissed off Hawkeye. Havoc had barely gotten a “--what---?” out before Ed had pushed past him out of the office, and Hawkeye had started laying into Mustang.

Havoc had known it was bad when Mustang didn't defend himself.

Havoc had watched for a minute, as Hawkeye tore literal strips out of Mustang's hide, but had been unable to discern what it was that Mustang had said exactly, so with nothing to contribute, he'd slipped out and followed after Ed.

It hadn't taken long to find him-- the sound of an automail foot kicking the nine hells out of a bathroom locker had tipped him off. Thank fuck it had been after hours, long after most people had gone home for the evening. Havoc had gone in to find several dented lockers and a crying Ed.

He... hadn't really been prepared for that. Havoc remembered hovering awkwardly, making weird sounds and waving his hands for a few moments in a bad attempt at making him _stop_. And Ed had. Well, he'd stopped kicking the locker. He hadn't ceased crying though, sitting down on the bench with his hood pulled up over his head.

And Havoc had sat down with him. And, desperate to get Ed to stop crying, he had started stumbling out one embarrassing story about Mustang after another.

It had worked. Ed had stopped, and eventually was laughing weakly along with the stories. Yellow eyes had watched Havoc with something other than despair or hard anger, something a little warmer. He hadn't really had a lot of interaction with Ed up until that point; he had carefully, _studiously_ , avoided getting too much of the kid's attention. The Elric brothers were a magnet for trouble and if you followed someone who was actively planning treason on a day-to-day basis, trouble wasn't something you wanted.

But there they had been, sitting in the back of a locker room and talking together about all the times Mustang had managed to humiliate himself. Havoc had also made absolute sure to tell him about having to fetch things from the top shelf of the storage locker for him as well, because for all that he mocked Edward mercilessly, Mustang wasn't exactly the tallest guy on the block either.

Ed had dried his tears and was quietly laughing, and when Havoc finally heard approaching footsteps outside of the locker room, he'd quickly sworn Ed to secrecy about the stories. Mustang had come in a moment later and Havoc had taken his leave.

He'd half expected all the stories to be around headquarters by noon the next day, but nothing ever reached his ears. Edward never said anything about the locker room talk either. The only hint that it had ever happened was the mumbled 'thanks' Ed had sent his way the next morning, the appreciative look he'd been given, and the instant camaraderie that had sprung up and lasted from then on.

“Lieutenant?”

Havoc leaned up. He'd been staring at the sleeping Edward, and Alphonse was looking at him with something like worry.

“Sorry,” Havoc apologized, “Was just thinking. He's a little shit sometimes but he's a good guy. You know, with everything he had to worry about, he still found time to come out and go running with me when I was getting back in shape for my reinstatement.”

Al smiled again.

“I don't think a lot of people that first meet Brother see past the yelling and the noise,” he said quietly, “...They don't really see what a great person he is-- at least not at first. He's the sort of person-- well. With most people, you have to _earn_. Earn respect, earn attention, earn trust. With Brother though, that's the baseline for him. It's where you start. It's part of what makes him so amazing.”

Havoc smiled back at him. He was right of course. He'd heard the awkward first phone call to Mustang-- the stuttered 'sirs' and 'Lieutenant Colonels' until Mustang's attitude had earned him a one-way ticket to being called “that ass-faced bastard” for the next four years. Ed tended to follow the golden rule. He treated people around him the way he wanted to be treated back-- until they didn't return the favor.

Havoc opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by the sharp rapping at the door. They both turned to look as Hawkeye stuck her head in. She looked a little stressed, with her mouth set in a hard line and her fine blonde hair slipping from it's clip. She managed to pull up a tired smile when her russet red eyes fell on Alphonse, though.

“Miss Rockbell is here,” she explained to Al, whose face ran a little pale as he stood up. Hawkeye looked over at where Havoc hung awkwardly by the bed. “The general could use some assistance with the evidence.”

Havoc recalled the towering piles of boxes and smirked. “Some assistance” was usually code for “pull things down so Mustang can reach them”, and it brought to mind the stories that Havoc had told Ed that night in the locker room.

Hawkeye caught his eye and nodded to confirm his suspicions, then stepped aside to allow Winry Rockbell into the room.

Havoc felt himself tense up. Yep, he was not qualified to be a part of this, especially not with the frozen expression on Al's face and the searching, quietly desperate look in Winry's blue eyes. He quickly turned to look at Al.

“I'd better go see what General Mustang needs,” he said quickly, before making his exit. Al barely seemed to notice his fast retreat, too busy looking at Winry. He looked at Hawkeye in the doorway.

“I'm relieving Heymans of duty,” Hawkeye said quietly, keeping her voice low, “I haven't been to visit yet anyways. The General is going through the evidence and needs some more eyes to help him before he drowns himself in it all-- and he hasn't even gotten to Edward's file yet.”

“That bad?”

“Worse than we thought,” Hawkeye murmured, “Try to make sure he's not beating himself up over this, would you?”

“Gotcha,” Havoc replied, stepping the rest of the way out of the room. “ Heymans already gone up there? I'll grab them some lunch from the canteen and bring it up. Give him a distraction for a few minutes."

Hawkeye nodded and with a final glance at Al and Winry, stepped out of the room and closed the door. Al watched the shut door for a few moments, then turned to look at Winry. She was wearing her thick peacoat, her scarf bundled up tight against her chin. In one hand was a large metal case and in the other was a toolbox, and on her face was a look of trepidation.

“Hey,” he said softly, “Are the trains running again?”

“No, I hitchhiked,” Winry said, and then snorted at the incredulous look Al gave her. “I had Paninya with me!”

Al relaxed a little. It wasn't quite that he didn't trust Winry to take care of herself, but he did feel better knowing that she had traveled with the girl with rocket launchers in her legs. He didn't say anything, watching as Winry sat the case and the toolbox down and walked over to the bed. Her eyes flickered as she looked over Ed, examining every scar, every bruise with the practiced eye of a doctor. Al didn't bother covering Ed up around Winry-- she was his mechanic, and knew his body as well as he did. She'd see all the scars eventually.

“What happened?”

Al sucked in a deep breath and began to talk, spilling the whole story that he'd been given so far. He didn't gloss over anything, didn't omit any detail. He told her about the straitjacket and the prison and the torture. He told her how Ed had stopped breathing. He told her how the people responsible had gotten away.

He was telling her what the doctor had said about his chances when she finally shook her head, ponytail bobbing as she did so.

“Ed's stronger than that,” she interjected, “And maybe-- maybe it'll be like he was after what you two did-- when he was in the wheelchair. When he was catatonic. But you know him. He won't be like that for long. He'll get better. Al, he had two limbs ripped off at once and he survived and thrived.”

Winry blinked away some tears. Her eyes had gone a little red-rimmed while Al had talked, and her knuckles were white against the bed rails. Al couldn't bring himself to argue with her, not as she carefully walked around the bed, eyes not leaving Ed's face underneath the ventilator and oxygen mask. When she got to the opposite side, she leaned down and-- minding all the tubes and IV lines-- brushed some of his matted hair out of his face.

“Why do all the bad things have to happen to you, Ed?” she sighed, “You've got the worst luck of anyone I've ever met.”

Winry swept his hair from his forehead and gently pressed a kiss to the scar above his eyebrow. After a moment, she straightened up and gently tugged the blanket away from the automail port on his shoulder.

“He's too thin to support having his limbs on,” she sighed after a moment of looking at his chest, at looking at the surgical scarring and everything they implied. “I lugged those new automail limbs up here for nothing, then. Do you know where the old ones went?”

“...I don't, actually,” Al said, after a moment of silence, “I know they were with him when they found him, because Lieutenant Havoc said the arm was rusted.”

“Rusted?” Winry looked up and gestured for him to hand over the toolbox, which he did with a bit of struggle. “That's not good. If it got into his port it could cause tetanus. It's bad enough he's gone this long without any maintenance.”

She pulled a few tools out of her toolbox and, after lowering the bed rails on that side, she got to work examining Edward's port. After a minute or so she sighed and pulled out a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.

“Is he on antibiotics?”

“Yes, for his bladder infection,” Al replied, craning his neck to try and look into the port and see what Winry was unscrewing. “Why?”

“It looks like someone couldn't figure out how to unlatch his arm from his port so they just hacked a hole into it and snapped off some wires. Water must have gotten in, because there's some rust leeching in. Was he spasming at all?”

“Lieutenant Havoc mentioned he was before they got him here and put him on pain medication,” Alphonse replied after thinking about it for a bit. He was so tired, and the days were passing by in such a blur that it was hard keeping up with the smaller details. “But he hasn't since I've been here.”

“It's a symptom of tetanus. I know he had his vaccine done when he had automail surgery the first time, but it's been long enough he might need another one,” she finished with the screwdriver, then used the pliers to pull out a layer of plating inside Ed's port. Al grimaced at the rust that discolored the metal. Winry laid the plating down and looked back in and carefully dislodged two frayed wires. She laid them aside as well. “I think, other than the rust, this isn't in too bad of shape.”

She tucked the removed pieces away into a pouch in her toolbox and moved further down the bed to Ed's leg, sliding back to Al's side to better access it. Al helped her lower the bed rails, carefully lifting and pulling aside the hospital blanket.

As the blistered, burned and swollen mess of skin around Ed's leg port was revealed, Winry uttered a horrified gasp.

“ _What_ \--”

“They electrocuted him,” Al explained quietly, “I was told they used-- they used a cattle prod, or something. His legs and his throat are awful.”

Winry clenched her screwdriver in her hand so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Her mouth turned down at the corners and her eyes became a bit glassy. Al watched her shoulders raise and tense up-- a sure sign that she was about to explode into tears and anger.

Al grabbed her free hand.

“Win, he needs you,” he pointed out quietly, “The doctor was talking about removing the leg port to keep the burns from becoming infected. He can't-- he shouldn't have to go through that surgery again. It isn't fair.”

Winry looked down at their joined hands, expression still hard for a few moments. Finally, she squeezed his hand tightly. The pads of her fingers were rough from years of hard work, and Al could feel the random scars from tool mishaps and metal-shaping incidents gone awry.

Another moment passed and she let go, raising her arm to wipe her eyes.

“You better not let them touch my automail,” she huffed, bending down to carefully examine Ed's leg port. “I'll find the doctor that did it and hunt them down.”

Al secretly thought that Dr. Franz could give Winry a run for her money, but opted not to say anything. He watched as she bent down and began carefully removing rusted bits of metal and sheared wires out of his brother's port. She was quiet as she worked, carefully avoiding the blistered skin on Ed's leg. Dropping the refuse into her toolbox, Al watched as she pulled out a large, odd-looking tool he had never seen her use.

“What's that?”

“It's used to open the port,” she said, applying the tool to the inside of the port and turning the handle. “It'll lift the port up a little bit to give access to the skin underneath. It's not a lot of room, because if I pull it up too much it'll start affecting the bolts and could shatter his femur. It should give the doctor enough space to clean under the port. No water though-- just antiseptic.”

She hitched the tool in place and rolled up the edge of the blanket, using it as a prop to steady Ed's leg.

“ _Do not_ let anybody try to ratchet that up any higher; I don't care how inconvenient it is,” she said, packing away her tools, “They risk breaking his leg and making the situation worse.”

“Thanks Winry,” Al replied, and Winry sat down in the doctor's stool, wheeling it over to sit beside him. She rested one hand on his knee, looking out over Ed for a long time. Behind them, the ventilator hissed rhythmically in the silence.

“Do you know what you're going to do, yet?” she finally asked quietly. She reached up and rubbed at her eyes. She was tired, Al realized. Hitchhiking across Amestris was an exhausting endeavor.

“I'm a few months too young to get custody of Brother,” he explained, “Theoretically speaking, Brother will probably be in the hospital for that long so it won't really matter. I'll probably be eighteen when he's released; but I wanted to make sure that the state doesn't ship him off to a psyche ward before that happens. Granny put in a custody request for him.”

“So you'll be taking him out to Resembool then?” Winry asked, tilting her head so her ponytail fell across her shoulder. “...It'd be good for him. The winter's not as bad in the southeast, and he'll be getting a lot of space and air.”

“Yeah, but Resembool is far away from any major hospitals,” Al replied, “...If anything happened-- it's not to say Granny isn't a great doctor, but Brother needs a lot more help than an automail tech can provide. Granny's going to be his guardian on paper, but I'm going to keep him in Central, close to the hospital.”

“Makes sense,” Winry replied with a sigh, “So are you still staying with General Mustang then?”

“Yeah,” Alphonse replied, “But I've been saving up Brother's paychecks now that they're not being wrecked by rent and the interest from the hospital bills. We can probably buy a house outright here soon. General Mustang says we're welcome, but I'm sure us banging around in his spare room is going to be the opposite of fun for him.”

“General Mustang's a good person, I'm sure if he says he doesn't mind, he won't--”

The rest of Winry's sentence was cut off at the sound of arguing at the door. Hawkeye's voice, sharp and commanding, was overriding another voice. Al and Winry leaned forward to look as the door opened and Hawkeye stuck her head in.

“The nurse is being insistent,” she said, her expression apologetic, “I would've liked to have given you more time alone..”

“That's alright; I'll be in North City for a little while,” Winry replied firmly, standing and gathering up her toolbox. She left the large metal case tucked under Al's seat. “That's his new automail. If you can find the old pieces, could you?”

“I'll ask around and see where they were put,” Al promised, “Do you have a hotel room? If not, I can call ahead and get you a room before you get there.”

“No, Paninya and I were able to get one; but thank you--” Winry caught Al's elbow, tugging him up into a tight hug that made his ribs pop. She pressed her mouth close to his ear.

“ _It's going to be okay_.”

Al rustled up the strength for a watery smile, tightening his own grip on Winry. In spite of her nice clothes, when he stood this close Al could smell machine oil and grease on her.

“Thanks for coming,” he said roughly before letting her go. She squeezed his hand one last time, and with a quick smile at Hawkeye, she disappeared out the door.

Hawkeye turned to the side and let the nurse in, then stepped the rest of the way into the room and shut the door behind her. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest as the attending nurse hustled busily around the room, checking Ed's vitals and gathering up bandaging supplies. She set a pack she had carried in down by the bed.

“How are you doing, Captain?” Al said, glancing over at Hawkeye. She smiled back at him thinly, though her level gaze didn't leave the nurse. He wondered briefly how harsh the argument out in the hall had actually gotten.

“I'm fine, Al; it's sweet of you to ask,” she replied, “It hasn't been very busy today, so I thought I'd relieve Lieutenant Breda and pay Edward a visit myself. I rode with him on the way here, but I haven't gotten a chance to see him since he was moved to the ICU.”

“...General Mustang keeping you busy?” Al chuckled, and Hawkeye sighed, “I guess when it's something serious like this, he'll actually keep his nose to the grindstone, instead of having you chase him all over the building to get him back to his desk.”

'I've contemplated shackling him to his chair in Central, but he'd likely just make an inappropriate joke about officer-subordinate kinkiness,” Hawkeye replied flatly, her russet brown eyes sliding over to Al finally. Her expression softened somewhat. “How was Miss Rockbell doing?”

Al sucked on his bottom lip for a few moments.

“I think she took it... better than it could've gone,” he finally said, “Winry's an automail tech. She's always been the one to make Brother's limbs-- to help him stand on his feet and be able to do all the things he's done. I think being able to help with his automail makes her feel like she's not just standing by, not able to do anything. She isn't just a helpless bystander in all this. I think if she stays busy, she'll be fine.”

“That's good,” Hawkeye replied, turning her gaze back to the nurse, who was carefully redressing the blistered burns around Ed's neck. “I hope Miss Paninya doesn't let her be too busy though. It's hard enough getting the general to go to bed. I'd hate trying to convince a work-crazy automail tech to go to sleep.”

“Paninya can be pretty convincing when she wants to sweet-talk somebody,” Al replied as the nurse finished tucking down the bandages on his brother's neck, then began withdrawing tools from the pack she had brought in. Al blinked as a pair of scissors, a comb, and clippers appeared on the bedside.

“Um, ma'am, may I ask what you're doing?” he asked, standing from his seat and moving to the opposite side of the bed.

“We're going to shave all of this matting off his head today,” the nurse replied brightly, either not noticing or ignoring Al's look of horror as she pulled the top half of the bed up into a sitting position. She carefully tucked the IV lines and the ventilator tube out of the way, making sure not to kink the tubes up in the process. “He'll be much cleaner without that mess on his head--”

“--I-- can't we just cut it short?” Al asked, exchanging a fast look with Hawkeye. She stepped away from the door and moved to the nurse's side, “It's a little more work than just shaving, but he's always worn his hair long...”

“Hair grows back, sweetie,” the nurse replied blithely, reaching down and plugging in the clippers. “It'll be much easier in the long run if his head is shaved while he's in the hospital. No mess, no need to shampoo it at all, and it won't need to be brushed.”

Al wanted to fight this, wanted to argue, but found himself too weary to even start the argument. It was like swimming against a river current, at this point. It was just one more thing, wasn't it? Hair could grow back; it was alright.

“So, is this cleanliness for Edward's sake, or just to suit somebody's particular brand of laziness?” Hawkeye asked suddenly, interrupting his thoughts. Her tone cut sharper than one of Izumi's butcher knives. “Because the case you're making sounds like somebody that doesn't want to deal with their patient's needs.”

The nurse gave Hawkeye a quick side-eye.

“The matting is unhealthy,” she said carefully, treading a bit lighter now that she had noticed she had walked into dangerous territory, “It's pulling at his scalp and causing sores.”

Hawkeye reached out and picked up the scissors and comb on the table.

“Why don't you go take break,” she suggested, “And we'll take care of Edward's hair?”

“If you just cut it, then it'll all be uneven,” the nurse protested. “Wouldn't it be better--”

“Why don't you go take break?” Hawkeye repeated, her voice dripping ice, “ _We'll take care of Edward's hair._ ”

The nurse hesitated, then looked over at Alphonse. Finding no support there, she sighed and set down the clippers, holding her hands up in defeat.

“Twenty minutes,” she said firmly, “When I come back and you haven't made any headway, then I'm sending you both out of the room and shaving his head.”

“I would dearly like to see you try,” Hawkeye replied frigidly, eyes narrowed to slits, “But please, take your twenty minutes.”

The nurse left in a huff, shutting the door a little harder than necessary. Hawkeye watched after her for just a moment before turning back to meet Alphonse's worried gaze.

“I think I may need to lodge a complaint with somebody's boss,” Hawkeye said mildly, “Now, let's see about fixing this hair.”

“Is it going to be alright, really?” Alphonse asked, helping to steady his brother's head as Hawkeye used the comb to start picking at Ed's hair. “He does have sores, and it'll make his hair really uneven. I know Brother's only vanity was his hair, but I don't think he'd mind starting fresh either.”

Hawkeye picked several large mats free from the looser strands of Ed's hair.

“It might be selfishness, to be honest,” she finally admitted, “We're all so used to seeing Edward with a ponytail. It's just another shock, another thing to hurt us, and I'm trying to stave that pain off as much as possible. But I also think that Edward should have something that belongs to him. He hasn't had anything in so long. Even if it's uneven, his hair belongs to him. If he wants to shave it, that would be fine, but for now his hair is his.”

Al smiled a bit, then turned his attention back to his brother. Edward's skin was cool to the touch, but definitely warmer than it had been a few days ago. Carefully, he held his brother's head and neck as Hawkeye picked through the mats, clipping out the worst mats and gently untangling the smaller knots. Twenty minutes passed and the door opened, and Hawkeye turned around with a look frightening enough to send a chimera running.

The nurse left without a word.

Finally, Ed's hair was much shorter, but no longer matted. Hawkeye carefully tugged the comb through Ed's blonde hair, grimacing at the dried sweat and grime that came out with the motion. His hair was fairly uneven in some places, but Hawkeye had been meticulous in her process, and it wasn't as patchy as Alphonse had feared it to be.

Setting aside the comb and scissors, Hawkeye ran her fingers through Ed's hair, sweeping his messy bangs aside as Al carefully laid his head back on the pillow. Together, they lowered the bed back into a resting position.

Hawkeye eyed the pile of matted hair she'd made on the bedside table. Al thought she might sweep it into the garbage for a moment, but she stepped back instead and moved away from the bed.

“This mess needs cleaning, and Edward needs a good shampooing, and I can think of a nurse that's just right for the job,” she said idly, “I'll fetch her and get back to my post.”

“Captain?” Al called, stopping her as she was halfway out of the room. He smiled at her. “Thank you.”

Hawkeye smiled back, the look of promised retribution dropping from her expression to be replaced by something softer and kinder.

“It was no problem, Alphonse,” she said quietly, “Whether you held a watch or not, you're just as much a part of this team as Edward is. If you need anything else, I'm right outside.”

She slipped out, and Alphonse found his seat by his brother's side again. A few minutes later the nurse from earlier came in and started the process of cleaning Ed's newly trimmed hair. Al tried to keep his smile to a minimum as he picked up his book again. With the nurse bustling around with false busyness, he opted not to read out loud, reading to himself for the first time that day.

 _"From our earth wells forth a fertilizing fountain, whence flow two precious stones. The first straightway hastens to the rising of the Sun; the other makes its way to the setting thereof. From them fly forth two Eagles, plunge into the flames, and fall once more to the earth. Both are furnished with feathers, and Sun and Moon, being placed under their wings, are perfected."_  

* * *

 

Breda bit the end of his pen.

Again.

The plastic was warped under his teeth, dented from where he had quietly chewed on it for the last few hours.

Falman's handwriting looked up at him from the folder that was spread out in front of him, perfect draftsman lettering translating the records of torture in clean, concise lines. It seemed so cold and sterile that Breda suddenly felt like he was the one behind the desk, signing off on allowing the torment to happen.

He took the pen out of his mouth. He needed a break. He needed to walk away from this; he needed to _get away_.

Breda looked away from the translated papers. Outside their small 'office' window, the sun had gone down, a mere sliver of orange light behind the buildings of North City. In front of him, Havoc was quietly at work, mouth set in a deep frown and a dark shadow cast over his face as he stared at Falman's translated documents. He hadn't so much as looked at Breda since they had started working.

Breda glanced over at the other occupied desk. Mustang had been poring over a box of photos. Havoc had seen a few, and judging by the ill expression he'd gotten, Breda had decided he didn't want to see what they were of. As it was though, Mustang had gone to sleep about an hour ago, cheek resting in one hand and a photo in the other, and dark shadows under his eyes.

If this was Central, if everything was _normal_ , they would have woken him up and nagged him to no end for sleeping on the job. Now though? The man was running on fumes, and so they let him sleep.

Breda looked back out the window. It would get completely dark any minute now. He swallowed anxiously, jiggled his foot one last time, then began to tuck the papers and files back into the folder.

Havoc looked up at him for the first time since they had started working.

“...You going somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Breda said, keeping his voice down as he put everything together neatly and set it aside, “It's six now. About dinner time, y'know? I'm starved, and--and I figure Al probably is too.”

He made a big fuss over the papers, making sure they were all aligned perfectly before putting his pens into the styrofoam cup they'd designated as a pen holder. He avoided Havoc's gaze carefully.

“Yeah?” his best friend's voice sounded suspiciously light, “Yeah, I bet he is.”

“Yeah,” Breda grunted, standing up and grabbing his coat. “I saw a little sub shop down the street. Figured he was getting tired of cafeteria food, so I'm going down that way. He seems like a balsamic dressing kind of guy, right?”

“Right,” Havoc said, “I'd go for the toasted herb and cheese bread too.”

Breda swung his coat on and angled for the door, quietly sidestepping the boxes to avoid waking up his sleeping commanding officer. Just as he got to the door, he heard Havoc call out to him.

“Hey, Heymans,” Havoc said, and his light tone turned kind of awkward. “--Hey , I wanted to say sorry.”

Breda had had a few moments in his life where he was fairly certain he'd snapped his head around fast enough to cause whiplash, but this was one of the most serious cases he'd ever had. He gaped a little at Havoc, who gave him a sheepish side-eye.

“I was a bit of a dick earlier. We're all handling this our own way and I kinda shit on you for it. So, sorry.”

They stared at each other wordlessly for several long moments. Finally, Breda huffed.

“Yeah, me too;” he grunted, “For what I said. You're right, though. I've been kind of a shitty friend.”

They stood in uncomfortable silence. After a moment, Havoc coughed into his sleeve. Breda snorted.

“Yeah, this is weird now--”

“--We good--?”

“--Yeah, yeah, man--”

“--Alright--”

Silence descended again. They stared blankly at each other.

“Heymans, if you don't get out of this office, I'm going to throw you out myself before I die from all this awkwardness,” Mustang suddenly muttered, sitting up and letting the photograph flutter from his fingers. He reached up and rubbed at his tired eyes. “Go get Alphonse some food. Jean, go get _us_ some food.”

Breda snickered.

“Sounds like somebody's cranky from their nap,” he chuckled, getting a sour look in return. He held up his hands. “Alright, I'm gone.”

Thirty minutes later found Breda standing outside Ed's hospital room, a sack with several sub sandwiches under his arm. He held one out to Hawkeye, who took it gratefully.

“Want me to take over again?” he asked as she unwrapped her sub—pastrami and provolone, with no mustard.

She folded her napkin in her lap.

“Jean's taking up for me in a little while,” she said, “Your shift won't start until three in the morning.”

“I'm so glad Kain and Vato are back,” Breda groaned, shifting the bag under his arm. “I'm tired of these shifts. At least with Kain added in we can stretch out the breaks a bit.”

“Alphonse is on a thin wire,” Hawkeye said, her voice pitching low. “If his brother-- he's got good chances, but if the unthinkable happens—if Edward dies--”

“We're gonna have a whole bunch of dead Drachmans, cuz Al's going hunting,” Breda finished, sighing. “Our job is to knock his ass out cold if he tries it. I know.”

He turned back to the door, nodded once at Hawkeye, then knocked sharply. Steeling himself, he pushed the door open.

Once he was inside the room, Breda abruptly remembered _why_ he didn't want to come in here. The ventilator hissed, loud inside the concrete walls, and the monitors beeped low and slow with Edward's heartbeat. Ed himself was buried underneath tubes and IV lines. He barely looked like Ed. Not anymore. The Ed that he'd heckled on the way out of the office a year and a half ago was gone. This one was still and silent, smaller than when he'd last seen him. Bruises, cuts, burns, and scars wrote their stories across his skin, his body a canvas to torment.

Al sat up in his chair, setting aside a book he'd been reading. Breda gave the precarious stack of books nearby a narrow look, but didn't remark on them. He tugged out one of the sub sandwiches and handed it over.

“Guessed at what you wanted,” he grunted, smirking a bit when Al let out a happy noise at the balsamic dressing. He'd guessed right. “Figured I'd roll by and say hi at some point today. Haven't really gotten a chance to see the kid yet.”

He chanced a nervous look at Ed. He was small under the weight of the hospital equipment, but Breda could see the signs of growth here and there-- Ed's shoulders had broadened a bit, and there was some chest hair sticking out over the blanket. He even had a few fine blonde hairs on his chin around the whitened scars. He'd have to put weight on for them to really see the changes.

And that... that really fucking sucked. Ed had grown up inside a cell, and they had all missed it. Or-- it had been stolen, actually, both from Ed and from them. They had never gotten the chance to take Ed out to see his first movie like they'd talked about, or to get him wasted drunk on his eighteenth birthday, or teach him how to drive.

And Ed had missed his brother recovering and _thriving_. He hadn't gotten to enjoy all of Al's firsts with him-- first swim, first time eating Xingese, first time he got to experience snow after getting his body back. All of that had been snatched from him.

“Not really a kid anymore, is he?” Breda said, voice soft and quiet. Ed was in bad physical condition, and he'd be in bad mental condition too, but he hadn't really considered all of the things that Ed had missed out on while locked up. How much of a let down was that going to be, when he wouldn't get to enjoy seeing Al's face light up after eating ice cream for the first time again?

“No... not really,” Al's voice was sad, and Breda knew by the sound of it that he'd already taken all of that into consideration. He already knew the letdown of not getting to experience those firsts with his brother at his side.

Breda looked back at Ed. His chest moved up and down mechanically as he laid there, his heartbeat beeping out a low and unsteady rhythm in the background of the room.

It didn't really seem like Ed at all. And judging from the way the other, more-awake prisoners acted, he wouldn't seem much like Ed when he woke up either. Breda tried to picture it, tried to imagine Ed coming out of this on the other side unscathed.

He looked at the bandaged burns on Ed's neck and couldn't picture it.

“It's okay,” Al suddenly said, and Breda snapped out of his thoughts to look over at him. He had a thoughtful look on his face, the piercing kind that looked right through a person to the other side of them. “It's alright to be scared.”

“What?” Breda managed after a moment of working his jaw.

“Being scared of what's going to happen,” Alphonse replied, taking several small bites of his sandwich before continuing. “Nobody knows what he's going to be like. Not even the doctors can tell me if he's going to be the same as he was before. So I'm scared too. And that's okay.”

Breda has quiet for several long minutes. Finally, he heaved a deep, unsteady sigh, taking a seat in the doctor's stool and wheeling it over. He pulled out his sub sandwich and began to eat too. He didn't argue with Al. What was the point? Al was right of course, and there wasn't a whole lot he could do to fight him on it. His avoiding Ed the last few days had only made it more obvious to the world that he was afraid out of his mind.

“You know what's not going to change?” Breda managed to croak out finally, clearing his throat to try and steady his voice, “When he wakes up, he's going to eat us out of house and home.”

Al laughed softly, casting a long look over his brother.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “No food is safe.”

“Man, you ever hear about the time he found my freezer box in the office?” Breda asked, snickering, “I thought I'd hidden it too well in the supply closet to be found, but it's like he's one of those drug-dogs or something, except for food. I snuck in to grab an ice-cream sandwich on a hot day and found that little shit in there eating the whole box.”

Alphonse laughed again, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing his face. He looked tired, Breda noted. He was like Mustang, staying up for so long, spinning his wheels until his shoulders bent and the shadows under his eyes deepened to purple.

Breda leaned against the bed rails, looking over at Ed for several long moments.

“Couldn't keep candy hidden from him either,” he continued, “If I left so much as a chocolate bar in a drawer he'd sniff it out. You remember that trick taffy I left on my desk?”

“Yes,” Alphonse grinned, “You know it turned his mouth and lips bright blue for two days? He brushed his teeth for nearly an hour before he admitted he couldn't get it off. He whined and moaned about it for ages.”

“Taught him not to steal from me, right? For all of a week, maybe,” Breda snorted, shaking his head, “Next time you two were back in town I had a deli sandwich whipped right off my plate. I was only away from the desk for a second.”

The two of them laughed together, Al with his face half buried in his hand and giving his brother an exasperated look. Breda gave him a careful once-over.

“...If you want to get some sleep, I'll stay up with him for a bit,” he offered, and Al's yellow eyes snapped back over to him. “I know I haven't... I know I haven't really been around much the past few days. But I'll sit with him, at least for a little bit longer tonight.”

Al leveled him an unreadable expression, then closed his eyes and eased himself out of his chair. He tossed the sub wrapper into the nearby bin.

“Thanks,” he said, smiling at Breda. “I feel like I shouldn't be tired because I haven't really _done_ anything, but--”

“--You've been worried,” Breda replied, swapping seats so Al could move around him to get to the cot. “Sitting and worrying can exhaust you just as quickly as running laps. It's fine. Nobody's gonna accuse you of all people of being lazy.”

Alphonse struggled into the cot, kicking off his shoes and pulling his blanket over him. Breda briefly wondered if anybody had brought him clean clothes or anything, because he was fairly sure Al was wearing the same sweater vest he'd worn when he had arrived at the hospital.

He settled back in Al's chair and looked back over at Ed. Nothing had changed. Ed was still and quiet, blonde eyelashes still settled against pale cheeks. After a while, Breda leaned back in the seat and rested against the bed rails. In his cot, Alphonse only took a few minutes to fall asleep before his breathing evened out and he began to snore lightly.

After a few minutes, Breda couldn't help himself and he closed his eyes too.

 

* * *

 

Roy was silent as he walked the halls of the hospital.

Attending nurses avoided him, and the few doctors out and about still at this hour ignored him. He supposed he couldn't blame them. He knew he looked like a mess, with his rumpled clothes and his hair in a veritable nest on his head. His body felt heavy with exhaustion, but his thoughts were keeping him awake, keeping him from falling asleep in his cot in the office.

Roy wished he hadn't looked at the photos. He had barely made it through the file with the first victim before he had to set it aside and close his eyes. By the time he made it through three files, he had to get up and walk around to try and work out the nervous, sick energy that built up inside him.

How people could do things like that to other people--

\--Roy remembered sand and fire and ash and screaming, and a knot clammed up in his throat, making it hard to swallow away the nausea. Was he really much different? Could he claim to be better than these scientists that cut open living people?

He huffed out a deep breath, turning a corner as he walked. Havoc had left him on his own several hours prior with the order to “get some sleep, Boss”, but he couldn't. After ten files worth of torture and misery, his brain was running away with him. Each file that he finished, the torture escalated and got worse. The files got progressively bigger as the Drachman interrogators got more creative with ways to make alchemists talk about their work.

What would Edward's folder look like?

Roy dreaded it, was privately terrified of getting to it. His stomach was cramping with the fear of it. He knew what he had said to Hawkeye earlier that day, that he _had_ to, but the impending knowledge of what had been done to Edward was making him sick with anxiety.

Roy turned another corner, and found himself in the hall with Havoc. The other man straightened up in his seat when he saw him.

“Boss, this is sort of the opposite of sleeping,” Havoc pointed out as he walked up to him, “You're gonna crash and burn like this.”

“I think I can handle it,” Roy replied, tilting his head as he glanced at the door. “Is Alphonse still awake?”

“Asleep,” Havoc replied, patting his pocket like he was going to reach for a cigarette. “Little Boss is still asleep. Heymans is too. Everyone that ought to be asleep right now is--'cept you.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant, for the running commentary,” Roy deadpanned, reaching for the door, “I'll send Heymans out to go to bed.”

“Hey Boss?” Havoc said, before Roy had pulled the door open too much, “...You know he won't want you beating yourself up and tormenting yourself like this.”

 _'I should have sent someone with him; I should have checked before he went; I should have done **more**_ ,' Roy's thoughts whirled up in a frenzy again, sticking up his chest with guilt and making it hard to draw breath again. Unable to reply, he opened the door and stepped into the hospital room.

The lights had been dimmed to a soft yellow glow. In Al's usual spot, Breda was collapsed against the bed rails, head resting in his hand. Al was curled tightly under his blanket in his cot. Ed was unmoving, as he had been, except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. The ventilator pump hissed off to the side, and the heart monitor beeped softly in the quiet of the room. Several books had fallen from the table.

Roy surveyed the scene for several quiet moments, then stepped forward and pressed a hand to Breda's shoulder. The larger man grunted, eyes peeling open to squint at Roy.

“You have a shift at three,” Roy said, pitching his voice low, “Why don't you go lay down properly?”

“Uhhmmgh,” Breda groaned, sitting up and twisting his back. Roy cringed at the sound of his spine cracking loudly. “Hm. Yeah. You stayin'?”

Roy hadn't considered that option, but after a moment's thought, he nodded. If he wound up staying awake, at least he'd be staying with Edward and keeping him company. If he fell asleep at the bedside, he'd get some rest.

“Alright,” Breda murmured, moving with the speed and care of someone that was moderately drunk. Roy could sympathize. “Later, Boss.”

Roy waited quietly for the door to shut behind Breda before he turned back to the bed. He quietly stepped up to the bed rails, careful not to let his boots scuff or squeak against the tiles as he did so. Edward lay silent and still in his bed, newly trimmed hair loose around his face. He'd been told about the episode between Hawkeye and the nurse, and was unfathomably glad that she'd been there to put her foot down. Ed didn't deserve any of this, and if there was one thing left that belonged to him, so much the better.

His skin had more color than it did when Roy had last looked at him. The slightest tinge of pink was suffused in his pale cheeks. Hoping that was a good sign, he looked down at Ed's hand. His left arm was resting in a cast, but his fingers stuck out of the plaster, resting on his stomach. They were reddened and bruised, the knuckles slightly swollen from their time trapped inside the straitjacket.

Hesitantly, Roy reached out and gently touched Ed's fingers. They were cool to the touch, but warmed quickly in his hand. Al had told him, once, that Ed's automail caused him to have a slightly lower body temperature than most other people. Roy supposed that and the swelling was why his fingers felt so cold-- entertaining any other idea made him sick to his core.

Ed slowly dying in this hospital bed, the warmth leeching away from his body, wasn't an option he could consider.

Roy glanced over at Al. A mess of golden-blonde hair was all he could see of him; the blanket was pulled all the way up to his ears, and his face was pressed deep into his pillow. Roy smiled at the sound of muffled snoring, then slowly eased himself into the chair that Breda had vacated.

Roy looked at the books that had fallen down around the chair. Likely Breda had elbowed them off in his sleep. Carefully, he gathered them up from the floor and sat them back on the pile, taking the one with the red tasseled bookmark into his lap.

He opened the book with a crinkling of paper and the creak of a worn-out spine.

“ _Then the Stone ascends to heaven, and again descends from heaven to earth,_ ” Roy began reading quietly, finger pressed to the beginning of his paragraph, “ _The spirit and body are first separated, then again joined together by gentle coction, of a temperature resembling that with which a hen hatches her eggs. Such is the preparation of the substance, which is worth the whole world, whence it is also called a "little world."”_

Roy looked over at Edward. It had been a long time since he'd done real research and looked at texts like these. He had put so much of his energy into politics and the like, he hadn't had real time to devote to his craft.

Perhaps, with the path to the Fuhrer-ship now laid so clearly before him now, that could change.

“ _The possession of the Stone will yield you the greatest delight, and unspeakably precious comfort. It will also set forth to you in a typical form the creation of the world. It will enable you to cast out all disease from the human body, to drive away poverty, and to have a good understanding of the secrets of Nature. The Stone has virtue to transmute mercury into gold and silver, and to penetrate all hard and firm bodies, such as precious stones and metals. You cannot ask a better gift of God than this gift, which is greater than all other gifts.”_

Roy kept reading, turning page after page, even as the night wore on into early morning and he heard Breda stick his head in to the room to check on him at the beginning of his shift. Eventually, the moon had sunk low enough in the sky that its weak light shone through the blinds, casting slants of white light across the room.

“ _For the Sun shines upon the water, and heats it until steam is seen to issue forth. This vapour becomes wind, and, on account of the large quantity of they air, we get moisture and rain: so air is once more changed or coagulated into water, or rain, and causes all things upon earth to grow, and fills the rivers and the sea.”_

Roy wouldn't mind a trip to the seaside, now that he thought about it. He got a lot of vacation days as a general, more than one person really needed to be honest.

Maybe when Ed was better, when he could sit up, he'd take him and Al with him.

Maybe they'd just rent a lakeside cabin and just enjoy a nice summer down in the south, away from all the cold and grief of northern Amestris.

Roy let his gaze wander away from the book, over Al's rumpled blanket. He'd rolled over at some time in the night, his arm now hanging off the cot. The moonlight cut stripes of light across his sleeping face, and there was a damp spot in his pillow from where he'd opened his mouth. Roy smiled a bit at the sight and sort of wished for a camera. Times like this were when he missed Maes the most.

If he were here...

..Roy suspected that they'd have to keep a guard on him too. Maes had never explicitly said it, but Roy knew he had loved Ed and Al like they were his own sons.

Roy tried to shake the thoughts of his friend out of his mind, going back to the ideas of vacation instead. Ed would need one-- a long one. He could use the space and air to recover.

Maybe they could go somewhere close to Resembool instead of the seaside. He could imagine Ed and Al, relaxing in the shade of a sunflower field.

Or the tourist destinations of West City, where historic buildings sat in the shadows of national monuments and towering redwood forests.

Roy let his gaze travel along with his musings, sliding away from Al's cot to Ed's hospital bed. His eyes followed the hard shadows of the blinds, turned wavy from the creases in the blanket, up Ed's legs to his slightly exposed chest. The scars carved mercilessly into his skin were turned silver-pale in the moonlight.

Roy looked into Ed's face.

Yellow-gold eyes, swathed in purple shadows and half-hidden by messy bangs, stared back at him.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyyyyy I'm still alive and working on this :>  
> Thank you everyone for all the comments! I READ ALL OF THEM I SWEAR, but there's gotten to be just so many that it's hard to keep up with. I love everybody so much for all the kind words :DDD  
> As always, please watch the tags-- there's a lot of medical horror going on here!  
> [And this is my tumblr if you wanna see mine (and others!) art of this fic!](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-AU)

 

 

The darkness was parting; the veil of shadow over everything was lifting away, revealing aches and pains that he hadn't been able to feel before. Pain gnawed in his stomach, his throat was raw, and his elbow was throbbing.  
  


The voices he could hear earlier were back, except it was only one voice now, muffled and steady and without pause. He hung on to it, clinging to it's familiarity as nightmares, old and new, curled up around him, ready to drag him back into the dark, and--  
  


\--Ed peeled open his eyes. They were crusty with grit, dry and painful as he blinked. He stared blearily at the ceiling for what felt like ages; and it took nearly that long to notice the light. It was pale, cutting harsh lines across the ceiling, but it was light.  
  


It was _light_.  
  


Not florescent, not from an overhead lamp. It was real, natural light. Ed stared up at it in wonderment, just watching as it slowly shifted across the ceiling tiles. A small, tinny suspicion nagged at him--  
  


\--was this real? Or was this a trick, some new form of torture they had thought up? Let him see the sky, let him see the world outside and then put him back in the cell again? Push how helpless he was even further, give him a taste of air that wasn't stale and stinking of misery. Ed's thoughts start to race in panic and he tried to gulp in air.  
  


His throat hurt. Ed moved his lips but couldn't draw breath, and before he could stop himself he attempted to swallow.  
  


He gagged, mouth opening a bit to try and accommodate the ventilator tube. Ed squeezed his eyes shut and tried to settle-- they'd be back, they'd be back and they'd drug him into paralysis again, and he didn't want that-- he wanted this little bit of freedom that he'd won by chance. He tried desperately not to swallow reflexively, tried to let the ventilator do its work.  
  


The voice stopped. Ed was left in silence, and he slowly opened his eyes. Cautiously, he looked over to his side, turning his head as best he could without upsetting the tube in his throat.  
  


It was hard to focus on anything more than three feet away from his face. It was all blurry and fuzzy at first, and Ed was unable to make sense of the mess of blue at his side for the first few seconds before Roy Mustang came into view. He was sitting with his leg hiked up, chin resting in his hand and a book propped up on his raised knee. He wasn't looking at the book though, slowly looking around the room as if searching for something.  
  


Agonizingly slow, his dark eyes moved over to the hospital bed, starting at the end of his blanket-- _his blanket, he had a blanket_ \-- before finally, finally meeting Ed's gaze.  
  


Silence reigned in the small hospital room, then Roy finally moved, the book falling to the ground in his hurry to stand.  
  


Roy's mouth moved, but Ed couldn't make sense of what he was saying. A split second passed again and Roy turned to look at the foot of the bed, where Alphonse slept on in his cot. His voice was muffled and distant as he spoke again.  
  


Ed closed his eyes. He was _tired,_ and this was all too good to be true.

  
He'd had this dream before.  
  


Muffled silence again, then voices, cottony and softened by distance.  
  


A hand found his shoulder.  
  


Pain, like _fire_ , like a hot wire, raced down his shoulder blade to his ribs and up to his collarbone. Ed's eyes snapped open wide and he sucked in a deep breath-- or he tried, but he couldn't, he couldn't even scream and he was choking--  
  


\--he raised his arm and his elbow felt like it was breaking as he did so. He couldn't bend it, but that wasn't really a new thing. His skin crawled beneath the fingers on his shoulder and Ed wanted little more than to crawl away, to get away from the touch. Hanging over him, Roy and Al's mouths were moving, voices rapid but still too fuzzy to understand.  
  


His fingers ached, felt swollen and hard to bend, but Ed managed to get them wrapped around the plastic tubing attached to his face. Once he was sure of his grip, Ed began to pull at the ribbed plastic. Medical tape tore at his skin as he gagged and choked on the tube as it slowly slid up his throat. It felt like he was vomiting up a plastic grocery bag.  
  


A hand seized his and yanked it away from the tube. Ed looked up at Al desperately, kicking his leg as he swallowed and retched reflexively against the ventilator tube. Al looked down at him with wide eyes. He was speaking, but Ed still couldn't make out what he was saying.  
  


He couldn't breathe. He was drowning. Ed squeezed his eyes shut and tried to blot it all out again.  
  


Al looked over at Roy. Roy looked back at him with wide eyes and a paler-than-usual face.  
  


“Please get a nurse,” he managed to say in as calm a voice he could manage, while keeping Ed's casted arm away from the ventilator tube. Roy looked frozen in place, still staring at him and Ed. “ _General, please get a nurse.”  
  
_

The harder, more urgent tone seemed to work, because Roy practically bolted from the bedside, the heavy door shutting with a bang behind him. Al turned his attention back to Ed. His older brother's face was screwed up tightly beneath the ventilator mask, the beginnings of tears building up in the corners of his eyes. He was kicking his leg, and his left thigh was moving enough that he was worried about the spreading tool Winry had put inside the automail port. She had warned that too much jostling could shatter his femur. Keeping Ed's wrist tight in his much stronger hand, Al put one knee up on the bed and used his other hand to pin Ed's leg to the mattress.  
  


“Brother, can you look at me?” he asked, trying to get Ed to open his eyes. Ed didn't, turning his head to the side and moving his mouth against the plastic tube. “Brother, you have to let the ventilator do its job. You can't pull it out, it's there to help you.”

  
Ed didn't open his eyes, didn't react except to keep struggling and kicking. Alphonse was practically in the bed with him, holding him as still as possible. At least, Al figured as he kept his brother's hand pinned away from the ventilator, Ed was too thin to put up a real fight.  
  


The door opened and Roy re-entered the room, standing aside for the two nurses that came barreling in.  
  


“Mister Elric?” One nurse said, standing over Ed while the other stood by the IV rack. “Mister Elric, we need you to stop struggling. You can't pull out your ventilator, alright? Can you understand us?”  
  


Ed didn't respond, thrashing his head to the side and kicking out with his leg.  
  


“Mister Elric?” the nurse tried again, “Mister Elric, do you think you could look at me? Can you let us know if you understand that you can't pull out your ventilator?”  
  


Ed stilled for a moment, lips still pressing up and down on the tube in what looked like a desperate attempt at screaming. Alphonse felt his stomach roll at the thought, that his brother was being denied even the ability to express the agony he was in.  
  


With Ed falling motionless, Alphonse slowly released his casted wrist.  
  


“Mister Elric?” the nurse tried. Ed didn't look at her, wouldn't open his eyes. After a few seconds of heavy silence in the room, Ed raised his hand back to the tube and tried to grab it again.  
  


As Al grabbed his hand again and tried to smother out Ed's renewed struggling, the first nurse turned to the other, who was fiddling with something in her hands.  
  


“Start at 25mg,” the nurse said, and Al looked up just as the other one inserted a syringe into the IV bag hanging from its rack and began plunging something in. “He's thin, so we may have to work our way up to the necessary amount--”  
  


“--What did you give him?” Al asked, eyes skittering between Ed, the nurse, and Roy, who was doing mostly the same. The man was hovering nearby, like he wanted to help but was terrified of actually touching Edward. He looked a hair away from actually wringing his hands.  
  


“We're going to sedate him to keep him from--”  
  


“-- _sedate him?_ ” Hysteria crawled up his throat, releasing itself into the shrill, high note his voice took, “ _He just woke up!”  
  
_

“He's having trouble with the ventilator,” the nurse continued to explain, “Sedating him will relax the muscles in his throat and keep him from gagging on it. It won't be a complete sedation either-- he'll feel really loopy-- maybe like he's drunk, but he won't be completely unconscious.”  
  


In his grip, Ed's struggles quickly turned to weak twitches. His eyes slid open again, but instead of being filled with terror, Ed's gaze was unfocused and bleary. After a few minutes, Al relinquished his grip on Ed's wrist, helping him put his casted arm back into a resting position where it wouldn't be strained.  
  


“Where's Dr. Franz?” Al finally managed in a tight voice, smoothing Ed's trimmed bangs away from his face. “She said she'd be here when Brother woke up.”  
  


“It's very late, Mister Elric,” the nurse that had sedated his older brother said in what was an attempt at a soothing voice. It only managed to grate on Al's nerves, however. “She'll be here at six--”  
  


“I want Dr. Franz,” Alphonse demanded. He knew he was being belligerent, stubborn and angry at the wrong people. But Ed had just woken up. His brother was scared, confused, drugged, and struggling to suck in every breath. “I want Dr. Franz here. She said she would be here when he woke up.”  
  


There was a murmur between the nurses and the sound of Mustang interjecting, but Al barely paid attention to them as he watched his brother's eyes open and close very slowly. He was staring up at the ceiling, eyes sliding back and forth as though examining the tiles overheard. Al waited for a split second, then made the decision to lever the rest of his weight into the bed. He curled up beside his brother, careful not to upset any of the medical tubes and cords leading out from underneath his brother's bandages.  
  


Ed didn't so much as glance away from the ceiling tiles, his eyes going from one to the next without pause. Al slid his hand under the blanket, finding the cold skin of his brother's side. Beneath his fingers, Edward's ribs swelled and lowered in time with the hissing of the ventilator. Ed didn't react at all to the touch.  
  


“Al?” Mustang said quietly, and Al looked up slowly. The nurses had left, and the older man was leaning over the bed, hands tightly gripping the bed rails. He was looking more at Ed than he was at Al, watching his face carefully.  
  


Ed didn't seem to notice him.  
  


“They're making a call for Dr. Franz,” Mustang said quietly, “I expect she'll be here soon. I'm sure Heymans is having a heart attack after watching me run out of here full tilt for a nurse. I'm going to let everyone know alright?”  
  


Al felt his fingers tense. He hated to ask, but Mustang looked tired, and his face was worn. He'd been up all night, Al surmised, judging by the fallen book still resting between the chair and the bed. It was only _right_ to ask.  
  


“Do you want help?” Al managed in a quiet voice, “I know Warrant Officer Falman and Sergeant Fuery are out in the dorms--”  
  


“That's _very_ kind of you, Al,” Mustang said, smiling appreciatively down at him. “But I think-- I think you should stay here. With your brother. He needs you more than I do right now...and I'll call Miss Rockbell's hotel room and let her know as well.”  
  


Al rustled up the energy to smile back at Mustang.  
  


“Thanks,” he said softly, watching as Mustang cast one last look over at Ed before leaving.  
  


Ed seemed pretty content to count ceiling tiles, but Al wasn't going to hold it against him. He gently squeezed his brother's side. Ed's ribs swelled beneath his palm, and his gaze slowly dragged back and forth.  
  


“Hey Brother,” Al whispered. Ed didn't look at him. “Hey. It's been a little while, you know? A year and a half. That's five-hundred and forty-seven days we haven't gotten to see each other.”  
  


He reached up and gently wiped the crust built up in the corner of Ed's eye. Ed seemed to flinch in slow motion, but didn't look away from the ceiling.  
  


“It's okay to be scared,” Al continued, running his thumb gently over Ed's cheek. “I know, Brother. I love you, okay? I want you to hear it right now-- just in case. I love you. And I'm going to be right here. With you, from now on. I won't-- I won't let anything happen to you. Not ever again, okay?”  
  


Alphonse swallowed. His throat stuck with the effort and the familiar burn of tears sprang up in his eyes. After a moment, he sucked in a deep breath, timing it with Ed's.  
  


“Can you hear me?” Al whispered softly, “Brother? We're gonna get you better, okay? And then we'll go back to Central, and buy a house and get you out of the military okay? We don't have as much money as we _should_ , but it's enough to get started. And we can both go back to school. And you can do anything you want in the world, okay?”  
  


Al reached across and laced his fingers through Ed's slightly swollen ones, careful not to upset his arm.  
  


“I love you,” he said softly, “You're going to be okay.”  
  
Al stayed like that, partially curled around his brother, fingers loosely knitted through Ed's with his head propped in his hand. He quietly whispered to Ed, ignoring the nurses checking in on them periodically. He might have drifted off to an uneasy sleep at one point, because there was a period where he couldn't remember anything but murmured voices and then--  
  


\--a hand on his shoulder. Al jerked his head up, nearly sliding backwards off the bed. If it weren't for the bed rails pressing into his back, he might have. Al blinked, confused, then looked over at Ed.  
  


His brother was still looking at the ceiling, but it wasn't the frantic, back and forth across the ceiling tiles that he had been doing previously. His eyes had gone half-lidded, his expression blank.  
  


He looked up at the person who had woken him. It was Mustang, who was looking at him worriedly. Behind him, Dr. Franz was busying herself around the counters. She was wearing a white doctor's coat over a nice button up and a pair of plaid pajama bottoms, which were bunched up around a pair of snow boots. Her gray-blonde hair was tucked up, but the bun was hasty and falling apart with every movement.  
  


Two nurses were already in the room, dressed down in scrubs. Al looked over at them, then back at Dr. Franz when she turned around. She was frowning deeply, and Al immediately felt guilty for dragging her out of bed.  
  


“Alright, anybody that doesn't have a medical license needs to be out of this room in the next ten seconds,” Dr. Franz ordered, and one of the nurses pulled a cart full of miscellaneous medical equipment over to the other side of the bed.  
  


“What's going on?” Al asked, accepting Mustang's helping hand and letting the man pull him out of the bed. “What are you going to do?”  
  


“He's managed to dislodge his ventilator tube enough to cause problems,” Dr. Franz replied, folding her arms. “We're going to do an extubation, but for that you two need to _get out_.”  
  


Al didn't want to leave. He didn't want to abandon his brother. With two nurses honing in on Ed and Mustang dragging him out of the room, Al didn't have much of a choice, however. The last thing he heard as they left was Dr. Franz speaking to Ed.  
  


“Mister Elric, we're going to be doing an extubation, alright? I'm going to talk you through the process...”  
  


The door swung shut, and Al looked up at Mustang.  
  


“She said _problems_ ,” Al asked tiredly, reaching up to touch two fingers to his head. A headache was beginning to form behind his eye. “What-- what was wrong? Was he not breathing properly?”  
  


“I think she meant future issues,” Mustang replied soothingly, “Nothing right now. She did say that the process should only take a few minutes but they'll be monitoring him for at least an hour before we can go back in.”  
  


There was a shuffle off to the side. It was Breda, and he was holding two cups of coffee. Al took his gratefully, and Mustang murmured a soft thanks as he accepted his from the lieutenant as well.  
  


“How's he looking?” Breda asked, waiting for Al to finish draining the styrofoam cup. “I mean. Before the doc charged in there looking like hellfire was coming for you.”  
  


“I--” Al tried to search for the words. He felt just as helpless as when he'd first arrived, his whole world being shaken up by uncertainties and unsure guesses. “...He was awake.”  
  


“He couldn't exactly speak, with the ventilator tube in,” Mustang said smoothly, “We won't really know until after this procedure is done.”  
  


Al shot him a grateful look. He wasn't really sure how to explain anything, how to explain that his brother was awake now but barely responding to anybody. After a little bit more talking-- mostly on Mustang's part, because that was definitely something the man was good at-- Breda went and got them some chairs. To stay out of the way of the night shift nurses and hospital staff, they moved their little group to the payphone alcove to wait.  
  


It was only a short while later when Hawkeye showed up. Like Dr. Franz, her uniform was a little rumpled and her typical bun was askew. Unlike Dr. Franz though, she didn't look ready to come for somebody's head. In fact, she took one look at Al's face and immediately wrapped him into a hug before she even greeted Roy. One hand ruffled, then smoothed his hair back in a comforting gesture, and Al fell appreciatively into the embrace.  
  


“Hey,” he mumbled into her shoulder, catching the faint whiff of detergent in her clothes. She'd gotten the uniform dry cleaned at some point but it had been at least a day or more, and it certainly had been a while since it was pressed and ironed. “Good morning. I'm sorry for waking you up...”  
  


“Don't apologize,” she murmured, “It's alright.”  
  


She asked mostly the same things as Breda, and got mostly the same answers. The others arrived all in short order, with Fuery finding three chairs to himself and draping himself over them. He'd taken the pillow from his dorm room and was using it to cover his face.  
  


Eventually, Winry walked in and Al's heart skipped a beat. Her expression was a mix of nerves and hope.  
  


Al stood up again, opening his mouth to reassure her. Before he could get anywhere though, there was the sound of snow boots scuffing the tiled floor, then Dr. Franz appeared in the alcove entryway. She was holding a clipboard under her arm. She also looked less like she was about to murder somebody and was just-- _tired_. The lines on her face were a little more pronounced in the shadow of the alcove.  
  


“...Edward came through the extubation process okay,” she explained, and everyone simultaneously sagged in relief. Fuery sat up and fixed his glasses back on his face with a slowly-released sigh. “He's breathing on his own, but he still needs some oxygen assistance, so we've got him on an NC line. His vitals seem to be good, considering his body condition. He's still not verbally responsive though, which is something we need to gauge how capable he is of making decisions.”  
  


“Is there anything we can do?” Alphonse asked. “Anything at all?”  
  


Dr. Franz held out the clipboard.  
  


“He might respond to a loved one,” she explained as Al took the clipboard from her hand. “These are questions I've written down for you to try asking him. They're mostly identification, but also a few to gauge his memory and his ability to process current information.”  
  


Al looked down at the small list of questions, then looked over at Winry. In spite of her obvious tiredness, she gave him a grim smile and nodded firmly at him, ever a rock in a sea of uncertainty. Her hand slipped into his and squeeze tightly.  
  


“Can Winry come with me? And the General?” Al asked quickly. Dr. Franz looked over at both of them in turn and then shrugged her shoulders. Al tucked the clipboard close to his chest and nodded at Dr. Franz, and together, the small group walked back to the hospital room.  
  


He felt Mustang reach out and squeeze his shoulder. Al might have thought it was meant to be bolstering, but he half expected the man was thanking him for asking him along without saying it out loud.  
  


They got to the bedroom door. Dr. Franz laid her hand on the handle, then turned to look at them as though she were going to say something possibly encouraging. After a moment, though, she turned back and pushed open the door, holding it open so that they could walk through.  
  


Ed's bed was pulled up in a sitting position, and Ed was resting with his head back against his pillow. An oxygen tube was wrapped around his face, making him look small and frail. He looked more alert than he had been earlier, but he didn't speak-- not even as Al walked up to the bed and leaned over him.  
  


He did make eye contact though. That was something.  
  


“Brother?” Al tried softly, glancing at the clipboard before looking back at Edward. His yellow eyes were staring up at him, the pupils slightly dilated from the overhead light. “Brother, can you tell me your name?”  
  


Silence. Al reached out across the bedspread and tried to touch Ed's shoulder, but his brother immediately flinched away from his touch. Trying not to be hurt-- because Al understood, he really did; Ed had been through hells he didn't know-- Al retracted his hand quickly and let it fall to his side. Ed was still looking at him though, watching him as though uncertain if Al was a threat or not.  
  


“Brother? Can you tell me your name?” he tried again. He was met with the same silence as before, and he looked away from his brother to see Mustang trying to wipe the despair off his face. Beyond him, Dr. Franz was looking at Ed with a deep frown on her face.  
  


“He isn't like the other patients so far,” she said after a few moments, “They range from completely non-responsive to being capable. Edward is reacting and looking at us, but he's not _talking_. He's alert and responsive in every other way. The only thing I can think of is if the oxygen deprivation from needing to be resuscitated caused enough trauma to his brain that he can't speak.”  
  


Dr. Franz stepped forward and pulled a pen from her pocket, seemingly not noticing the looks of horror she'd garnered after the suggestion that Edward could possibly be silent forever. She held the pen right up to Edward's face and he flinched back, but she did not recoil away as Al had done.  
  


“Edward, can you follow this with your eyes?” she asked, moving the pen back and forth in front of his face. Ed's eyes flickered between her and the pen though, not following instruction at all. After a moment, she gave up and slipped her pen back in her pocket.  
  


“Brother?” Al asked, and Ed was still staring at Dr. Franz as she wandered over to the counter where his patient information sat. “Brother, can you look at me?”  
  


Ed didn't. Al hesitated, then looked at Winry. Quietly, she bent at the waist and leaned over Ed, who turned yellow eyes up at her.  
  


“Hey Ed,” she said softly, reaching down and pressing two curled knuckles to his casted arm, knocking on the plaster, “It's good to see you. We've all missed you, you know.”  
  


Ed stayed silent still, expression unwavering. Winry and Al glanced at each other again, but before either of them could speak, Dr. Franz turned around from the counter. She flipped through another clipboard, twice, then three times, then looked at the nurse standing nearby.  
  


“What did the preliminary nurse say about his ears?” she demanded, and the nurse froze.  
  


“I-- nothing, Dr. Franz,” he said cautiously, “I don't recall anything being said. Is it not written down?”  
  


Franz snapped the clipboard down and Ed flinched at the sound. Noticing, Dr. Franz softened her voice, but there was still an edge of venom to it that was unmistakable.  
  


“No, it's _not_ written down,” she said, opening up the cabinet and pulling out a tool that Alphonse recognized as an otoscope. She put a sterile cup over it and walked to the other side of the bed. “Edward, I'm going to take a look in your ears, alright? I need you to be still—”  
  


Right as she reached out and touched Edward's ear, Ed panicked. He jerked away from her, nearly flailing himself off the opposite side while making a soft, low keening noise that hit Al like a sucker punch to the gut.

  
His brother was _terrified_.  
  


“Doctor--”  
  


“Hold him down, if you can,” Dr. Franz ordered, motioning the nurse over. He and Al quickly took hold of Ed, Al by his shoulders and the nurse by his foot. In response, Ed began to struggle harder and kick out. He panted and made small noises and grunts as he fought, but he didn't speak out loud, didn't look at anybody directly once.  
  


“Here--” Winry moved around Al and grabbed Ed's left thigh, pinning it to the bed. Al abruptly remembered the spreading tool inside the port and her warning about it breaking his femur.  
  


When Mustang reached around Al and pinned Ed's head flat against the pillow, Ed began to cry in soft pants, and Al's heart twisted in his chest. He nearly asked if any of this was necessary when Dr. Franz pressed the otoscope into Ed's ear and peered through. She had barely looked for a second when she let out an angry huff.  
  


“There's something blocking up his ear canal,” the doctor said, sliding the otoscope into her pocket. She walked quickly over to the counters again and brought back a pair of forceps and a metal tray. She dropped the metal tray onto the bedside table, and then bent back over the bed and began to carefully slide the forceps into Ed's ear.  
  


At the feel of the cold metal, Ed let out a long, miserable cry.  
  


“Hold on, hold on, I know--” Dr. Franz muttered, carefully using the forceps to remove whatever it was jammed in Ed's ear. His brother whimpered underneath him. He seemed like he had fallen docile, but Alphonse knew better-- he'd seen his brother move whip-like fast before, so he knew full well not to let go.  
  


“It's okay,” Al whispered, not sure how much words were helping now that he knew his brother had apparently been _deafened_ somehow. “It's okay, Brother. You're going to be okay. I know it hurts, I know. Just let the doctor help, okay?”  
  


He ran his fingers over his brother's exposed collarbone, hoping it was as comforting as he meant it to be. Yellow eyes looked up to meet his own, and Al held his gaze unflinchingly, trying desperately to get across to him that they were just helping, that it hurt but the pain wasn't their end goal.  
  


“Alright, alright,” Dr. Franz carefully maneuvered the forceps out of his brother's ear. Something strange and lumpy, crusted with built up wax and pus, came out with the forceps. Dr. Franz frowned at it, pushing her glasses up her nose as she clinked the forceps against the tray to knock off the lump.  
  


She examined it carefully for several long seconds.  
  


“Looks like a foam earplug,” she declared then lifted the otoscope and-- directing Mustang to turn Ed's head-- she looked into Ed's left ear. With a sigh, she repeated the process of removing another foam earplug.  
  


She straightened up, throwing away the sterile wrap over the otoscope and tucking it into her pocket. She dropped the forceps on to the metal tray, along with the crusted over earplugs.  
  


“We're going to up the pain medication,” she announced, nodding at the nurse as they all let go of Ed. Al carefully slipped down into the bed, and Ed curled up tight into a ball against him. Al kept gently caressing his brother's collar, trying to be as soothing as possible as Ed raised his casted arm to hide his face, bruised and reddened fingers resting on one of his abused ears. Winry began inspecting the automail port. “He'll need a wax softener and an ear irrigation every day until there's no more infection.”  
  


She looked over at Ed and Al, her gaze softening for a moment before snapping back to the nurse  
  


“Find me the attendant that did the prelim. I want to know how the _hell_ that was missed. And take this--” she held out the metal tray out, and the nurse quickly accepted it, “And get rid of it.”  
  


“Can a member of my team photograph them first?” Mustang interjected, “They're evidence, and none of the other victims had these.”  
  


Dr. Franz nodded, and the nurse whisked away the metal tray. Curled up against Al, Ed was panting out soft sobs. Dr. Franz looked at him for several long moments, then shook her head.  
  


“We can try to ask questions later,” she said quietly, rounding back around the bed, “I'll have a nurse come in and give him another dose of pain medication, and once we get any leftover wax and obstruction we'll check to see how much damage has been done to his inner ear.”  
  


She gestured towards the door.  
  


“If you're not staying the night, I am going to suggest that you leave,” she said quietly, “I think he's had enough for the night.”  
  


Al looked over at Winry, then Mustang.  
  


“They can't stay?” he asked softly, “They really wanted to see Brother. Everyone else came out here too to see him--”  
  


Mustang stepped up and placed a hand on his shoulder.  
  


“It's fine,” he said quietly, “It's okay, Alphonse. I'll go and talk to everyone and explain what's going on. I'm sure we'll all get to see Ed over the next few days.”  
  


Winry tapped Al's leg with one finger, carefully covering Ed back up with the blanket. He tucked his thigh slowly out of the way, closer to Al as Winry grabbed the blanket off the pushed-away cot and draped it over Al's shoulders.  
  


“His automail port is fine,” she explained softly, “We can wait, okay Al? It's fine. Why don't you spend some private time with your brother? It's...it's enough right now to see him awake.”  
  


Al didn't feel like it was, but after a moment he nodded softly, and Dr. Franz herded them out, then turned and dimmed the lights a bit before closing the door behind her. Al waited a few moments for the sounds of their footsteps to die away, then waited a little bit longer when another nurse came in and injected some more pain medicine into Edward's IV. As soon as she left, Al hunkered down into the bed, resting his head on the edge of the pillow.  
  


“Brother?” he said softly, lifting Ed's hand gently. Ed's eyes were closed and he had stopped crying, but he was mouthing something repeatedly, over and over under his breath. He had left a small wet spot in the cotton of Al's shirt.  
  


Al sifted his fingers through Ed's slightly greasy, sheared hair.  
  


“Brother?” he tried again, then bent his head slightly to try and listen. Ed's voice was small and breathy, and his eyes had squeezed tighter shut. Al had to hold his breath, hold himself completely still and silent while watching Ed's lips to finally be able to catch what he was saying.  
  


“ _No sir no sir no sir--_ ”  
  


“Brother, who are you talking to?” Al tried, scooting down a bit to try and be face to face with Ed. His brother didn't look at him though, choosing to press his forehead into Al's shoulder instead.  
  


“Brother?”  
  


Ed's whispered words broke off into soft cries again. His face was red with tears and his voice was broken and cracking as he cried. His body shuddered and shivered against Al's.  
  


Al tugged the blankets close around their shoulders. He was very, very certain he shouldn't actually have been in the hospital bed with Edward, but neither Dr. Franz nor the nurses had said anything to him, so he wasn't planning on leaving his brother to curl in on himself alone.  
  


He'd been alone enough over the last year and a half.  
  


“It's okay,” Al said soothingly, reaching an arm around his brother to make sure the blanket was tucked in on the other side of him. As he did, Ed's body froze. Al was quick about pulling his arm back. “It's okay, Brother. Whoever it is, they're not here now. You're safe now.”  
  


Al used the corner of a sheet to wipe at Ed's eyes and the snot dropping from Ed's nose. Ed finally opened them, sniffling softly and hiccuping. He didn't look directly at Al, staring at some point in space around his shoulder instead.  
  


“Brother, I'm never, _never_ going to let anything happen to you again,” Al whispered, repeating his promise he'd made earlier, “I won't. You're going to be okay.”

 

Carefully, watching Ed's reactions as the pain medication took hold, Al slid his arm back over him. Ed's eyes flickered, then closed again slowly. His expression was dragged into slackness as Al slowly wrapped him into an embrace. His body was limp as Al cradled his brother's thin body close to his chest.  
  


Checking his face, Al could see that his eyes were still open a sliver, burning gold peering out at the room. Al swept some loose strands of his bangs away, tucking them behind Ed's ears. Some stragglers hung around though, too short to be tamed so easily. Al smiled at them and shook his head.  
  


After a few moments, he cleared his throat and rested back. Ed's weight sagged more and more against him until Edward's eyes finally slid all the way shut.  
  


As Ed's breathing went from panting to deep and even, Al finally closed his eyes too.  
  


One hand on his brother's chest, feeling the hard ridges of his rib cage and the steady beat of his heart beneath his fingers, Al went to sleep.

* * *

 

 

“So he _is_ awake then?”  
  


“That's right,” Roy said tiredly, reaching up to rub his brow. “Fullmetal's awake, but he's not really up for talking right now. In fact, he didn't say a word the whole time. Dr. Franz seems to think that it might be a result of having those--”  
  


He nodded towards the tray with the earplugs that the nurse was still holding. Falman had left to their office and brought back the camera and was snapping pictures of the crusted over earplugs. When he was done, the nurse whisked the tray away and disappeared around the corner, presumably to go throw the things away.  
  


“--in his ears. They're infected and there might be enough damage to render him deaf.”  
  


Breda let out a deep breath, resting his forehead in his large hand. He rubbed his reddish hair back.  
  


“It isn't really fair, is it?” he huffed, “That it's like this. He-- they both deserve better than this.”  
  


Roy sighed.  
  


“No, it's not. But this is what they've been given, so this is what they have to work with,” he replied, “No visitors tonight, so I apologize for dragging everybody out of bed.”  
  


There were murmurs from his men, none of them blaming or irritated with Roy. He couldn't have predicted what had happened with Ed.  
  


_No news was good news_. Military tended to live by this rule in an attempt at staying upbeat, at not getting lost when things seemed to drag on, at not losing hope when there were no phonecalls, no letters, no telegraphs, and no word.  
  


It was this philosophy they had lived on for the last year and a half, and were falling back on it now.  
  


Roy spoke for a few more minutes, answering some more questions, before dismissing them all. It was still early in the morning, and Falman and Fuery both still looked like they'd been dragged through hell. Breda's shift was up and it was Hawkeye's turn to sit by Ed and Al's door, and she took her chair with her as she bid Roy a very firm “ _Go to bed, sir._ ”.  
  


Roy was soon left with Winry, who'd been quiet the whole time.  
  


“Miss Rockbell, would you like an escort back to your hotel?”  
  


“No thank you, General,” Winry replied, standing up and smoothing out her skirt. “Paninya's downstairs waiting for me. It's just--”  
  


She hesitated, blue eyes sliding over in the direction that his men had left in.  
  


“He's right. The lieutenant. It's not fair at all.”  
  


Roy couldn't think of what to say this time. Not to the girl who had practically rebuilt Edward when he had been so crushed. Not to the family that had been left behind so much already-- no news was already too commonplace in her life.  
  


Roy.... should have fought harder. He should have pulled apart the red tape surrounding giving Ed back his small fortune. He could have put more pressure down-- regardless of how new the stars on his shoulders were-- he should have been more forthright in trying to get back what Ed deserved.  
  


If he had, Ed would have been able to resign from the military. He wouldn't be in this position. He would never have gone through what he had.  
  


“I'm sorry,” he finally managed, only just barely victorious in keeping his voice even. “...I'm sorry.”  
  


Winry watched him for a moment longer, then nodded.  
  


“Thank you, General Mustang, for finding him,” she said, standing in the alcove entryway for several seconds to look back at him, “...And for taking care of both of them. Al would drive himself into the ground staying by his side if it weren't for that.”

  
“It's not a problem. For any of us.”

  
“And the door guard?”  
  


Roy didn't reply, and only hoped that the look on his face was enough. She smiled at him, a dark edge to the curve of her lips.  
  


“Ed's awake now,” she pointed out, “...When he starts getting better is when Al is going to start looking northward again, especially if the people that did this aren't brought to justice. He won't leave his side now, but when Ed can take care of himself...”  
  


“I'll keep that in mind,” Roy replied, not allowing himself to show how unsettled he was by the way she had spoken. She knew Ed and Al inside and out and was probably going to be the best person to talk to if he ever needed to get inside Al's head to stop him from creating an international incident...  
  


...but it sort of sounded like she wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to stop him, either.  
  


Winry turned away.  
  


“Good night, General.”  
  


“...Good night, Miss Rockbell.”  
  


She walked away, and Roy was left alone. Taking this rare opportunity, Roy leaned, pressing his forehead to the cool brick wall. He was so _tired_ , but his nerves were jangled, his heart still beating at a faster pace than usual. Exhaustion burned behind his eyes, eyelids weighted down like they were made of lead.  
  


Riza was right. He needed to go to sleep.  
  


After a few minutes of silence, Roy heard the sound of snow boots scuffing on tile and he turned his head to look over at Dr. Franz. Her arms were crossed as she looked at him, some paperwork tucked beneath one elbow. After a moment, she went and took up residence in one of the abandoned chairs his men had left.  
  


“Doctor,” Roy greeted, cautiously leaning away from the wall and walking over to her. She looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “I apologize for dragging you out of bed like this. Alphonse and Major Elric were both distressed and--”  
  


“You can call him Edward around me;” Dr. Franz deadpanned, and Roy paused. “It's obvious you care about both of them, regardless of your status as his commanding officer. And it's not a problem-- in fact, it meant that I found this paperwork waiting on my desk now instead of in the morning.”  
  
She held out the paperwork in a quick, sharp motion that nearly made Roy jump. After a moment, he took the papers in hand and cautiously took a seat across from the doctor.  
  


After a few minutes of looking over the forms and legal jargon, Roy's heart fell even further than it had already.  
  


“Pinako Rockbell's request for custody was denied?” he asked, incredulously, looking for a cited _reason_. “Too old to care for an _invalid_? That phrasing aside, the woman will outlive everyone; I don't understand--”  
  


“I don't doubt you,” Dr. Franz replied flatly, resting her chin in her hand and leaning back in her chair. “A lot of these victims have families to claim them. Edward doesn't have anybody that legally _can_ \-- Alphonse is too young, Mrs. Rockbell is not related and too old. I don't doubt that the state will find a way to disqualify his mechanic too.”  
  


“...I don't understand...” Roy flipped through the paperwork, his eyes finding a familiar signature. He felt his expression crumple into a scowl. “...Ah.”  
  


“If he's signed over to family, they can take advantage of his pension and resources to help him-- which are expensive for the military,” Dr. Franz replied, “...With nobody to claim him-- and if he can't prove he's of sound mind to make his own decisions-- he can be signed into a psyche ward, drugged out of his head and forgotten. The amount of fighting and red tape to get someone back _out_ of one of those is remarkable. Even if Alphonse turns eighteen in a few months, it could be years before he's approved for custody.”  
  


“...I suppose it's cheaper for the military to have him strapped to a bed and sedated for the rest of his life,” Roy said sourly, still staring at the name signed on the dotted line.

  
He couldn't leave Central for five minutes before people started getting uppity, it seemed.  
  


“I'm not going to say the psyche ward doesn't have its place. For some, it's going to be the _only_ place for them. I've just seen a lot of people put in there that could be helped otherwise. Take it from a doctor--the military's never really been in the habit of taking care of its veterans,” Dr. Franz said idly, “Several of your victims have already been carted off. There isn't a whole lot I can do for them beyond taking care of their physical needs here. Mister Elric might have a chance though.”  
  


Roy looked up from the paperwork.  
  


“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, squinting a little at the doctor, “Alphonse should be the one to know.”  
  


“I'm telling you, because between the ages of twelve and eighteen, you've been listed as his legal guardian,” Dr. Franz stared at him evenly as he looked back at her incredulously, “You're essentially his parent, and you've made all his legal decisions in the past.”  
  


“I'm his commanding officer,” Roy replied cautiously, “Never mind the fact that the chain of command means I would be disqualified in a second; I was only granted guardianship because he was underage at the time, and it quieted the voices of people that opposed his enlistment based on whether or not children were able to make decisions of that caliber. As long as I had guardianship, I could make his decisions for him.”  
  


“...Alright, as morally dubious as that is, you're-- legally speaking-- the closest thing to family that he has, and probably the best wall between him and a nurse measuring his future in CCs.”

  
“If I were to gain legal custody of him as an adult, he'd have to be retired.”  
  


Dr. Franz let out a deep breath.

  
“How many of these victims are going to be fit for active service again, General Mustang?”  
  


Hardly any of them, Roy figured. They'd be lucky if one or two would be fit for desk duty. Field work was very far out of the question.

  
And Edward didn't seem like he'd be those one or two.

  
“As bad as it is, there's been some time bought by finding those earplugs,” Dr. Franz continued, “He can't really prove if he's of sound mind or not if he can't hear the determining questions. A few days while the infections drain, and we can see what the extent of the damage is, is about the amount of time you have to figure something out for him.”

  
She stood, and went to leave. Roy turned in his chair.

  
“Dr. Franz?” he called, holding up the paperwork. He dredged up the energy for a charming smirk. “Thank you for the heads up. Would you like to do dinner, perhaps?”  
  


“After a start as early as this, I'll be lucky if I'm awake by dinner,” Dr. Franz replied, squinting at Roy. “Go to bed, General.”  
  


That was a nicer shoot down than Roy expected, if he was being honest with himself, and he turned back around to flip through the paperwork.  
  


The military had fucked Ed out of his deserved money, and it _would_ do the same with any kind of treatment. The name scrawled lazily on the line, the one attempting to completely wring the Fullmetal Alchemist of all his options, glared up at Roy.  
  


He snapped the file shut and stood. After some consideration, he opted to leave Alphonse alone for now. He'd wait a few hours, give him a little time to rest and feel the comfort of his brother's heart beating beneath his fingertips. He could break the bad news when the sun had reached a less miserable position in the sky.  
  


Roy headed back to his office. As Riza had reminded him, he needed sleep-- but even now rest seemed like a long time coming. His desk was strewn with paper and Falman had kindly left the camera sitting on a stack of boxes he had yet to grow through. He would need to have the film in it developed. It not only contained pictures of the ear plugs removed from Ed, but also photos of every single victim and their conditions.

  
A small, dark box nearby held the film canisters of the photos Falman had—on his request-- gone through and snapped of the facility. He would need those developed-- and then he'd need to conveniently 'lose' the negatives somewhere safe, in case the military decided censorship was the best route to take.  
  


Roy sat down at his desk. The files he'd been going through, the ones filled with photos and information on every single prisoner, were still sitting there. The tenth file he'd gotten to was the last one that Falman had managed to translate. In spite of this, Roy's eyes flickered over to the box, where he could see the tab of Edward's file sticking out from the rest.  
  


He wouldn't be able to read any of it, but there would still be plenty of photos. Photos could tell a story just as much as pages and pages of reports. Roy rattled his fingers on the borrowed desk, then reached over and pulled the file out.  
  


It was heavy, noticeably more so than the first ten. Roy carefully set the file down in front of him.  
  


The silence in the office was oppressive. The clock in the corner ticked by, the only sound besides the pounding in Roy's ears.  
  


After several long moments, Roy flipped open the file.  
  


It didn't take long-- flipping through several reports, he found the first photographs. Edward was bound, naked, tape around his mouth and his eyes. There were bruises on what little Roy could see of his face. Old scars were white against the tan of Ed's skin, and he looked a lot less like a skeleton than he did in present time.  
  


He would have been unconcious, Roy knew, judging from the pattern of the other victims. They had beat, bound, and then drugged him, stripped him down, and then had taken photographs of his body while he could do nothing about it.  
  


Roy flipped through photographs, watching as Edward slowly morphed and changed over time. Many times he was drugged, unaware of the camera recording how vulnerable he was. Other times he was awake, yellow eyes staring angrily into the camera. His weight plummeted, the shadows under his eyes grew deeper and darker, and his face became more and more hollow.  
  


The anger in his eyes gradually turned to despair, and then it turned into nothing.  
  


Roy was watching his subordinate break down through a timeline of photographs.  
  


Roy found the medical reports and his stomach flipped inside him. He'd seen the other ones, of course, but it still felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice at the pictures of Edward laying on an operating table, eyes open and aware of what was happening.  
  


When the pictures of Edward cut open and his insides displayed surfaced, Roy wanted to throw up into the nearby garbage can. His body was drawn in on the reports, carefully diagrammed like he was a cadaver to be looked upon and examined. Arrows pointed out his organs and neat, draftsman handwriting undoubtedly wrote in their findings as though this were a perfectly normal thing to do to someone.  
  


The yellow eyes, forever captured in the overbright light of the operating table, held a terror that Roy couldn't begin to comprehend.  
  


After getting through the medical photos, Roy hit upon the torture. At some point in Edward's captivity, a switch had been flipped, and Edward had gone from operation after operation to being dragged into a torture room. Roy felt the numbness setting in over the queasy feeling, watching the muzzled Edward as he went from one miserable position to another.  
  


One photo in particular caught his eye. Edward was strapped into a wheelchair and muzzled. His face was badly bruised behind the layer of leather strapped over his head, his golden hair ratted up around the straps. He was sagged in the seat, head tilted sideways from being unable to fall forward, and his yellow eyes stared blankly at Roy, like there was nothing left for him to do.  
  


Like all the fight had gone out of him. Like it had all finally just been too much for him.  
  


Roy sifted through the photographs again, carefully selecting out the ones he felt would have the most impact when shown to someone. He would set Falman on translating the file as soon as he was awake.  
  


As he stood, Roy threw an apologetic glance over at the box of files yet to be looked at. He hated to show preference-- had been actively fighting against it, especially on the chance that Minsk would show up making demands-- but Edward needed an advocate _now_.  
  


Kendrick Minsk would have to wait, and as usual, sleep would too.

* * *

 

 

Morning came and went, and Al woke up just past noon to the nurse shaking his shoulder. Stretching, Al catalogued all the aches that came from sleeping curled up, pressed against the bedrails, with his brother--  
  


\--Al _woke_ _up_ , for real, sitting bolt upright in the bed. Beside him, Ed was awake again, resting back against his pillows and watching Al with a much calmer, quieter disposition than he had been last night. This started to change though, the more Alphonse moved in the bed. Anxiety ribboned through his expression, so Al slowed his movements, being careful not to rustle him too much.  
  


“We're going to try cleaning his ears here shortly,” the nurse said, and Al turned to look at him, “I was told he might struggle, so if you think you can keep your brother calm for the cleaning- or at least _still_ , it could save us from having to use restraints.”  
  


Al's stomach twisted at the idea, but before he could begin to protest, the nurse left the room.  
  


He looked back at Ed. His brother had pressed himself into the corner of the bed. The drugged, tactile version of Ed from last night was gone, replaced by the Ed that flinched at every touch. Al released a deep breath through his nose at the same time his stomach growled inside him-- he hadn't eaten in what felt like _forever_.  
  


“Hey, Brother,” Al said, clearing his throat and keeping his voice pitched low as he settled back on his knees close to Edward. He reached out and, being as slow and gentle as possible, rested his hand on Ed's casted arm. “Hey. They're going to put medicine in your ears soon, okay? Can you hear me?”  
  


Ed was _looking_ at him at least, which was a sight better than what he was doing the night before. Al cast a perfunctory glance at the overhead ceiling tiles before meeting Ed's gaze again.  
  


Ed looked away, staring into the corner of the room. Al tried to scoot closer and he cringed, seemingly folding in on himself, so Al fell still again. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth for several moments.  
  


“Brother?” he tried again, and Ed twitched at his voice, but didn't look at him. “I know your ears hurt, and I know you'd rather not have anybody touching them, but the medicine is going to help, I promise.”  
  


Ed didn't react to his words. Al took in a deep breath and shuffled a bit closer, his knees just barely brushing against Ed's back. Before he could speak though, the nurse returned, carrying a small tray. Another nurse filed in behind him and went to stand close to Ed's legs. The first nurse rounded the bed to where Ed had bunched up in the corner, and set the tray down on the bedside table. A basin of what looked like warm water, a bowl of cotton balls, and a large squeeze bulb. Al watched in no small amount of trepidation as the nurse filled the bulb with the water solution, then turned to look at Ed.  
  


“He's going to put the medicine in your ears, Brother,” Al explained, feeling and seeing as Ed began to tense up. “It's going to be okay. I know it's gonna probably hurt a bit, but--”  
  


The nurse pressed the tip of the bulb to Ed's ear. Exactly like the night before, the moment contact was made, Ed lashed out violently. Al was readier this time and pounced on him, pinning him down to the pillow as best he could. The other nurse steadied his legs, keeping him from flailing about too much.  
  


“Hold his head so the bottom of his ear is tilted down,” the nurse ordered, and Al obeyed, fighting against the struggling Edward as he pulled his brother's head up. The nurse tried again, although he was clearly trying to be gentle as he slowly pumped the solution into Ed's ear.  
  


Ed started making miserable, keening noises. His eyes were squeezed shut, his lips pinched until they were white as marble. Al tried petting him, tried rubbing soothing circles in his brother's back as the nurse carefully packed in a cotton ball.  
  


“Alright, let's try to flip him--”  
  


_That_ was a challenge in and of itself, but eventually the three of them managed to get Ed onto his other side. Al was careful to not pin his casted arm underneath him, already sure that it was in enough pain he didn't need the extra discomfort. Al pinned his weight over his brother as the nurse carefully dropped in more of the solution, then packed in a second cotton ball.  
  


“Good, thank you,” he said, backing off finally. He reached down and ratcheted the bed up into a sitting position, “Keep him sitting up so that both of those drain into the cotton balls, and we'll be back later to take them out. We'll try and get his bandages changed at the same time to reduce how often we're stressing him out.”  
  


“Thank you,” Al rasped, looking back at Ed, “I really don't want you guys to have to restrain him.”  
  


The nurse's expression softened as he poured the remaining solution in the nearby sink and gathered up his tools.  
  


“It's not our favorite thing to do either,” he said, and both nurses left. Alphonse helped Ed from his curled up position-- though it was hard to get him to do so, given how tightly he had balled himself up under his blanket after Al had let go of him. Settling Ed's head back on the upright mattress, Al tried to smile at him, barely managing to rustle the energy for it.

  
Ed's face was sticky with dried tears, so after a few moments, Al went to the sink and wet a towel before bringing it back over and carefully cleaning Ed's cheeks and the corners of his eyes. Ed fliched at each touch, but Al forced himself to continue instead of hanging back. Letting the gunk crust up in his brothers eyes wouldn't help him at all, no more than leaving the wax in his ears would.  
  


As miserable and terrified as it all had made Edward, Al knew it was necessary.  
  


“There we go,” Al said, carefully brushing his brother's sheared bangs away from his face, and he paused as Ed's glassy eyes slowly looked up at the ceiling. His face was expressionless now, and he was examining the ceiling tiles as though they were the most interesting things in the world to him.  
  


Al leaned back so he could look up at them too. They weren't particularly interesting-- just the run of the mill ceiling tiles most offices and hospitals and the like seemed to have. There were sixteen of them, Al worked out as he counted down both sides, although there were maybe seventeen if one counted all of the corner pieces.  
  


“You know I heard Fuery and Havoc wrecked the office ceiling trying to change a lightbulb,” Alphonse said idly, reaching out across the bed and sliding his fingers into Ed's swollen ones. Ed twitched a little at the contact, but didn't pull his hand away, nor did he look at Al. “I'm sure you would have laughed yourself sick if you'd seen.”  
  


Ed was silent still. Al inhaled deeply, but before he could continue telling the story, there was a knock on the door. He turned in his seat to see Mustang and Havoc standing there. Havoc was holding a styrofoam box, which he immediately held out to Al as he came in.

  
The smell of Createn takeout wafted from the box, and Al felt his stomach twist with hunger again as he gratefully took the box.  
  


“Came to see how little boss here is doing,” Havoc said around his unlit cigarette. At Al's look, he yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and tucked it behind his ear. Havoc looked over at Ed, who had shifted so he was pressed tightly against the opposite bed rails. “Heard he was sitting up a bit.”  
  


“Yeah, but he's not really talkative,” Al replied quietly, looking over at Mustang when the man cleared his throat. Mustang looked like he'd been run over, then the car's driver had backed up and made sure to pancake him into the mud. The dark, dark shadows under his eyes revealed his lack of sleep to the world, and under his arm was a small stack of paperwork.  
  


When he glanced at Edward, Alphonse saw an odd expression pass over his face. It was strange, almost like he was seeing something that wasn't there.  
  


Like the Edward he was looking at wasn't the one he was seeing; a wax sheet placed over the real thing, distorting and blurring the edges of Ed's form.  
  


“Alphonse,” Mustang said, finally tearing his eyes away from Ed to look over at him. “...I know you'd like to stay by your brother, but is it alright if I have a word with you privately?”  
  


Al looked at him, then looked back at Ed. He was right; he didn't want to leave Ed's side at all. But Havoc was already touching Ed's hand and talking amiably in spite of the fact that his brother was not responding at all to him, nor looking at him.  
  


Al looked back at Mustang. The styrofoam box was hot in his hands.  
  


“It'll only be a few moments,” Mustang said quietly, resting his hand on the door handle. “I wouldn't pull you away, but something's come up that I think you should look at. And it can give you some time to eat.”  
  


And a moment to take a breath, Alphonse considered. The hospital room had felt too small since Ed had woken up, too cramped to contain the grief and pain that he was captured in. He'd step out for a bit, eat and hear out what Mustang had to say, and come back with a fresher set of eyes and a brain that wasn't clicking through its gears like rusted automail.

  
“Lieutenant Havoc can stay with your brother until you return,” Mustang continued quietly, giving Alphonse a knowing look, “...He won't be left alone.”  
  


“Alright,” he agreed tiredly, sitting up. Switching the styrofoam box to one hand, he reached out and tapped the bedrails, letting his fingernail click softly on the metal. Ed stared resolutely away from him. “Brother, I'm going out for a minute. Lieutenant Havoc will stay with you, okay?”  
  


Nothing. Alphonse sighed, then looked at Havoc and nodded before following Mustang through the open door. They walked wordlessly until they got to the payphone alcove. Seeing that nobody was using the phone, Alphonse sat down in front of it, moved the phone book underneath the small desk, and set his meal down in the space between the wall and the phone. Popping open the lid, Al felt the hunger claw angrily at his stomach at the smell of buttery Createn scampi.

  
Finding the plastic fork, Al attacked his meal with the usual Elric vigor, though he did make an attempt at being polite and not slurping.  
  


Mustang took up the chair in the payphone beside his and, discarding his phonebook nearby as well, set the paperwork down and carefully shuffled it. He looked worse in low light than he did in the florescent light of the hospital room, the shadows over his face deepening as he sorted the papers.  
  


He, thankfully, waited for Al to scarf down a large part of his meal before he began to speak.  
  


“Has Edward said anything?”

  
“No,” Al said softly, “It's hard to tell if it's his ears or not. He's terrified of everything, though. I can barely even touch him without him flinching.”

  
“...Understandable,” Mustang replied after a moment, and the look on his face from earlier was back-- like he was seeing something that Al couldn't. “...Normally I wouldn't have dragged you away from your brother, not in a situation like this, but this is fairly urgent.”

  
He passed some of the paperwork over to Alphonse, and after wiping his hands on his small napkin, Al accepted them. He read through the front page, feeling his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach at every word.

  
“...Granny got denied? But she had us when we were kids, I don't understand--”

  
“--She signed over custody to me when your brother enlisted,” Mustang replied quietly, “In effect, she rescinded all rights to the both of you. Nobody really thought it would be an issue back then. But they've turned her down on account of her age now.”

  
“That's _ridiculous_ ,” Alphonse argued back, “Granny could adopt a wild bear and have it peeling carrots for her by the end of the day. She's not _too old—_ ”

  
“It is ridiculous, and I know why,” Mustang interrupted, though his lips twitched at Al's bear claim. He turned the pages in the paperwork and pointed out a name on a dotted line. “Certain people in the military are trying to save some money-- and probably even bury Edward in a mental ward and forget about him.”

  
Alphonse leaned forward and stared at the signature there. A thin razorwire of anger curled through him at the sight of the name. Of all the miserable, _ungrateful_ \--

  
“...There is another option.”

  
Al looked at Roy, letting his furious train of thought continue on its rails away from him. The older man suddenly looked anxious, like he wasn't sure what Alphonse would think of whatever was about to come out of his mouth. The anxious look was quickly replaced with his usual calm, indifferent mask, but Al had spent too long watching people not to know the signs.

  
His hands, shuffling and reshuffling the papers for lack of anything else to do.  
  


The long, slow way he looked around-- Mustang was too well trained to dart his eyes, but he still had the tendency to skimp on eye contact for several seconds.  
  


Alphonse watched, and waited, as Mustang scrounged together his nerves and looked at him again.  
  


“I _was_ your legal guardian after Pinako Rockbell rescinded custody,” he said quietly, “...Obviously after Edward turned eighteen, I'm no longer considered such, but I am _technically_ still yours. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for myself to file for Edward's custody.”  
  


“You're his commanding officer,” Alphonse replied quietly, “...Would you be allowed to? If they can argue that Granny is too old, and I'm too young-- they can argue that it wouldn't be _appropriate_ for you.”  
  


“If that was the case, they should have made that argument when he was twelve, but they didn't.”  
  


“That's because Brother was useful to them back then.”  
  


Mustang didn't argue the point, but shifted carefully in the little plastic chair as he continued speaking.  
  


“It wouldn't be inappropriate for me, because Edward won't be my subordinate when I file for his custody,” he said, “I think you and I both agree that his military retirement is a certain thing.”

  
“State Alchemist retirement goes through the Fuhrer's desk only,” Alphonse pointed out, and Mustang did not look surprised that he knew that little tidbit. “You'd have to talk to to him.”  
  


“Most of the patients with families have been reunited and I now have all the evidence from the Drachman facility in my possession. It's time I returned to Central City and sorted through everything,” Mustang replied, “...I'll be speaking to the Fuhrer on the behalf of everyone no longer capable of remaining employed by the military... including Edward.”  
  


Al was quiet. He'd wanted Ed to be out of the military, he'd wanted him to retire--  
  


\--but this wasn't how he imagined it going. He'd wanted there to be a party, with Edward triumphant and excited about a future outside of soldiering around in the field and avoiding death on a daily basis. The reality of it, Edward wrecked and cold and huddled in his blankets and _silent_ , weighed even heavier on Al's mind.  
  


“I'm going to leave Lieutenant Havoc with you,” Mustang continued quietly, “He'll be here to help you through everything and make sure everything is settled with the paperwork so that you don't have to worry about being the one to drag it all over the city; and he'll be here to stay with Ed for when you can't. He'll also help when it's safe to move Edward back to Central City.”  
  


Al nodded, then sucked in a breath and put a hand over his eyes.  
  


This was too much. It was all so... _overwhelming_ , and all he wanted to do was go and stay with brother and forget about legalities and money and the military machine as it chewed people up and spat them out again, mangled and wrecked on the other end of their contracts while failing to care for them in any shape, way, or form.  
  


“If you take custody of him, I want it the moment I turn eighteen,” Alphonse said finally, “...And I make all the decisions in his care. I don't want him used for your gain anymore.”  
  


Looking back up at Mustang, Al could see that _that_ had stung a fair bit, judging by the wincing curl of the other man's mouth. He didn't argue the point though-- because that _was_ what Mustang's and Ed's relationship had been based in since day one-- utilizing each other for personal gain. Granted, grudging respect and, eventually, camraderie had formed between them, but Alphonse had seen firsthand how Mustang had yanked the Hero of the People around on his own political chessboard.  
  


“I understand,” Mustang replied quietly, not letting on if he had been hurt by Al's accusation. “...I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll make sure everything goes through you, and rescind custody over to you as soon as you turn of age.”  
  


Alphonse was quiet for several long minutes as he continued to eat the rest of his meal.

  
“When are you leaving for Central City?”  
  


“Now that I have your permission for custody?” Mustang leaned back in his seat a bit. “...As soon as possible. These sorts of things are best handled quickly and _efficiently_.”  
  


Al wanted to feel a little sorry for the person who signed off on Edward being sent to a psyche ward, but couldn't bring it in himself to dredge up the usual sympathy.  
  


“Before you go on a warpath, burn down half of Central Command and wind up needing to be bailed out of jail for arson, you should probably go visit Brother,” Alphonse said, sticking the napkin and fork into the styrofoam box and clicking the lid shut. “I know you were there when he woke up, but you should give him a real visit bfore you leave.”  
  


Mustang was quiet.  
  


“Where are you going?”  
  


“To throw away my trash,” Al replied, standing up in his chair. He had slept the night before-- had slept longer and better than Mustang-- but exhaustion still weighed like lead in the base of his spine. “And then I'm going to the hotel where Winry's at to explain things to her.”  
  


“Will you wait for Lieutenant Havoc to accompany you?”  
  


Alphonse picked at his sleeve in a very absentminded sort of way. Internally, he had to crush a wave of annoyance. He was pretty much over the chaperone system Mustang had set up, but he knew now that it wasn't sustainable-- not if he and most of his staff were returning to Central.  
  


Havoc couldn't keep an eye on him every hour of the day, even if he gave it a damned good try.  
  


“I'll wait for him by the main door,” Alphonse said, then nodded to Mustang. “I'll see you later?”  
  


“Of course.”  
  


Roy watched, waiting in the payphone alcove that he had already spent far too much of his life in the past week, as Alphonse disappeared around the corner. As his footsteps faded down the hallway, he let out a slow breath.  
  


He couldn't say that Al's verbal suckerpunch hadn't hurt. It _was_ true, in ways, that he had used Edward for everything he had to give-- he'd dragged Ed through hell at times. His suffering had polished the stars on his shoulders, but Ed had used him back. Name dropping, military resources, vast amounts of state alchemy research funds, _Roy's protection_ \-- all of it.  
  


Roy had considered it a mutual relationship-- but now he was considering that Alphonse might not see it that way.  
  


Roy walked back to the hospital room. Havoc looked up sharply at him, eyebrows shooting up at whatever expression was on his face, so Roy schooled it into something resembling his normal self. The cotton balls from Ed's ears were gone and a nurse was tying off the last of Ed's rebandaging. Ed himself was looking into the corner of the room, legs pulled up and away from Havoc. His casted arm rested around his midsection and he was scrunched up tightly, his messy hair hanging around his face and obscuring his expression.  
  


When the nurse finished, he helped Ed tuck the blankets tighter around his shoulders before excusing himself out of the room. Roy waited until the door shut behind him before speaking.  
  


“Alphonse said he was going down to Miss Rockbell's hotel,” he said quietly to Havoc, “He said he'd wait for you at the door, but he's not in a good mood so I don't know how truthful he was.”  
  


“Guess he didn't take the news well?”  
  


“That's a way to put it,” Roy replied tiredly, “If you could go after him?”  
  


“Sure thing,” Havoc said, then turned to look back at Ed as he stood from the chair. “I'll see you around, Little Boss.”  
  


Ed didn't react. Havoc sighed, tapped the bedrails and gave Roy a nod before sidling out the door. Roy saw him slide his cigarette out from behind his ear and back into his mouth just before the door shut behind him.  
  


Roy was left with the silent Edward. Ed made no sign that he even knew Roy existed, staring blankly at the wall. Angling himself right, Roy could see that his eyes were flickering back and forth, as though seeing something he couldn't on the wall.  
  


The images of Ed he had seen earlier, the pictures depicting gruesome surgery, torture, and misery, flickered through his mind, and he had to shake his head to clear them away. The photos sat in his pocket still, and it felt like he was carrying something diseased and filthy, like just having it on his person meant it was slowly infecting him.  
  


“Hey, Edward,” Roy said quietly, stepping up to the bed and slowly taking the seat he had been in mere hours before. “I know... I know you're probably not in the mood to talk with anybody. You don't have to if you don't want to, of course. I just wanted you to know I'm here.”  
  


Silence. Edward stared resolutely into the corner. Underneath the thick blanket, his thin body looked even smaller and frailer than it already was.  
  


Roy inhaled deeply, looking around the room. He spotted the book he'd been reading out loud the night before. He picked it up and found it helpfully bookmarked.  
  


“Well, we got cut off before we could get done with this book; though I'm not sure how much you could actually hear of it, considering,” he said quietly, sliding a finger down the page until he found the relative area he'd been in the night before. “How about I read it to you and when you get tired of listening to my voice, you can tell me to shut up?”  
  


As expected, Edward didn't reply. Roy sagged back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other, setting the book on the edge of the bed so he could lean on his elbow there. Tiredness burned behind his eyes as he looked down at the fine printed words.  
  


“If I go to sleep, I need you to wake me up,” he said, “...With the mood your brother is in, he might strangle me in my sleep.”  
  


Nothing. Roy didn't push, taking a deep breath before he began to quietly read out loud.  
  


“ _Then take one parte of this spirit, which is become as insensible dust, and cast upon molten gold it turns all into powder which being drunk in white wine, openeth the understanding, increaseth wisdom, and strengtheneth the memory, for here is the vein of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge,”_ Roy began, resting the weight of his head on his hand. “ _The truth of every thing is said to be his incorrupted nature, for nothing shall rest eternally visible at the last fire, but that which is of pure virtue and essential purity.”  
  
  
_ Roy read on and on, not looking up at Ed, careful to keep himself small and unthreatening on his side of the bed. Every once in a while he heard Edward's blanket shuffle and shift, but he didn't look up, not wanting to frighten him into retreating, or worse-- into a panic.  
  


Eventually, so slouched in his seat and having been up for such a long time, Roy closed his eyes and didn't force them open in time to stop himself from falling asleep.  
  


He didn't wake when Riza came in later and laid a blanket over his shoulders before leaving.  
  


He didn't wake, either, when Ed slowly turned to face him, watching him with wary golden eyes.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Oh look I'm still alive~~)  
> As always, watch the tags and enjoy the story.  
> Any art for this story, by myself and others (!!!) can be found [here](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au)  
> All of my art FMA related can be found [here](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art)  
> And thank you for everyone's super kind reviews and comments :3333 You are all the BEST.

 

“If you think being Fuhrer means you get to kick your feet up and delegate all the paperwork away, you've got another thing coming for you.”

  
Roy looked bemusedly over the piles and piles of paperwork that covered the Fuhrer's desk. Grumman himself looked tiny underneath the disarray, but he was smiling nonetheless.

  
“I'll remember that,” Roy said after a few moments of silence, tilting his head a little. “Is this an everyday occurrence? Or has something special happened?”

  
“A public water system has to be built in Ishval. The one from before the Massacre is too completely destroyed and too contaminated to use. It has been cleaned out and dismantled.” Grumman replied, “The men stationed out there have been working on the concept for the new one to replace it, and Major Miles has sent in the final plans for approval."

  
“...And these are... all the plans?” Roy asked curiously, glancing a little more carefully at the papers. He'd put aside his Ishval work in favor of the missing alchemists case, but it was still good to know that everything was continuing as smoothly as it possibly could. Reparations were being made, and right now that was all he could ask for.

  
Maybe, once he'd closed the case and tied up all the loose ends, he'd get back into it. He'd planned to be much more involved in the Reconstruction of Ishval-- but then again, perhaps it was better if he wasn't, at least not publicly. It was likely better that it was the face of Major Miles and the warrior-monk Scar that lingered in the minds of people when they thought of all the rebuilding being done.

  
“Water can be complicated,” Grumman said simply, sweeping several piles off to the side and making room on his desk. “...Now, what can I do for you, General Mustang?”

  
Roy slanted him a sharp look.

   
“...I'm requesting Major Edward Elric's official discharge. He is no longer fit for service.”

   
That hurt to say; like Edward was a broken machine part that simply needed removal and replacing. Roy swallowed down his distaste however, giving Grumman a steady look.

   
Grumman made a grumbling noise in his throat, opening the top drawer of his desk and pulling out a form. Roy could see it was a discharge form for State Alchemists. Uncapping his pen, Grumman began to fill out the top of the form with quick, looping handwriting.

   
“He's a very valuable asset to the State,” Grumman said idly, not looking up from the form, “If there's a chance at recovery; if he remains capable of serving...?”

   
Roy slid his hands out of his pockets. Clasped in his fingers were the photos he had taken from Edward's file, and he carefully slid them onto the desk, one at a time. Grumman stared at them with hardly a flinch, but his lips pursed beneath his gray mustache all the same.

   
Ed laid open from sternum to navel, Ed strapped down and tortured, Ed starved away of all his weight and strength, Ed with the light faded from his yellow eyes. All of these looked up at them, an undefinable hell contained in five by seven inches.

   
“He hasn't spoken. He doesn't even make eye contact if he can help it, and he sits curled in the corner of his bed and has to be forced to take any kind of medication.” Roy said quietly, “If he recovers from this at all, he won't be of any use as a field agent. It's too much to ask of him.”

   
Grumman silently filled out the rest of the form, then reached into another drawer and began filling out the paperwork that he found in there as well. Signing his name with a quick flourish at the bottom, he capped his pen, stamped the Fuhrer's seal on the top of the paperwork, and then held up the papers to Roy.

   
“A discharge with full honors,” he said as Roy took them, “Should the Lieutenant Colonel wish later to rejoin, there is always a place for the Fullmetal Alchemist in the military.”

   
Roy paused while flipping through the papers.

   
“Lieutenant Colonel?”

   
“He's done our country a great service-- many times over, in fact;” Grumman steepled his fingers in front of his face, the corners of his eyes crinkling up with the force of his smile. “And the pension plan increase between Major and Lieutenant Colonel is quite significant. Of course, you'll have to take the promotion paperwork down to Finances to clear it through, and then everything down to Veteran's Affairs to ensure it all goes through the appropriate channels.”

   
Roy flipped through the papers and smirked at the additions that Grumman had tacked on in the margins of the paperwork, signing each one with his initials.

   
“Of course, sir,” he replied after reading through it all, “I'm sure the Lieutenant Colonel and his family will appreciate the thought that went into this.”

   
Roy looked back at him, but Grumman wasn't quite looking at him, nor the photos he'd put on his desk pad, nor the piles of paperwork around him. Roy followed his gaze to a framed newspaper article hanging on the wall, the Central Times front page with a massive picture of Ed and Grumman shaking hands. Ed was grinning like a loon, still running high on the glee of getting Alphonse back and the fact that just a few days prior he'd decked a god in the face. “HERO OF AMESTRIS!” was emblazoned across the page as a headline.

   
When Roy looked back at Grumman, the man was looking back at the photos of Ed on the desk. After a moment Grumman sighed and gathered up the photos into a messy stack. With gnarled, wrinkled fingers, he tapped them out straight, and then handed them over to Roy.

   
“Give the Elrics my well wishes. I'll have to invite them over for dinner. Yours and Riza's invitations are, of course, automatic.” Grumman said with false cheerfulness. Roy, recognizing the dismissal for what it was, accepted the photos and tucked them into his pocket. He slid the paperwork under his arm and executed a sharp, precise bow. He turned on his heel and headed for the door. A small thought niggled at him halfway there, and he turned to look back Grumman.

   
“...About Major General Hakuro...”

   
Grumman snorted into the coffee cup that he had held up to his face, eyes narrowing to amused slits as he looked over the curved rim. After a few moments, he set the cup down.

   
“I require a Major General in his position still, unfortunately,” Grumman said idly, “...Unless you're willing to fill his job, please leave him in at least one piece so that I can continue to have some use of him.”

   
Roy smirked, letting the coldness he felt curl in the set of his mouth.

   
“Of course, sir,” he said, then turned back and left the Fuhrer's office with quick, purposeful strides. He had another visit to pay before he could tend to Ed's needs. Ignoring the passing soldiers that saluted or pressed themselves against the walls on his way past, he strode with intent down the halls of Central Command towards Hakuro's office.

   
As he walked into the outer office, Hakuro's captain looked up at him with wide eyes, jumping up from his seat and snapping to attention as Roy strode in.

   
“Sir, would you like me to announce you--”

   
“No, Captain, that will be fine.” Roy said firmly, clearing the office space in three quick steps and grabbing the door handle. Without another word to Hakuro's staff, he swung the door open and went in, shutting it behind him with a sharp enough _bang_ that the man in question jumped behind his desk.

   
That was actually cathartic, Roy considered as he stalked through Hakuro's office to his desk. No wonder Edward had liked to kick open his door and slam it shut so much.

   
Roy let the thought of the Edward before, alive and warm and happy and full of life, fuel his stormy thoughts, forming them into a precise, vicious lightning strike. Hakuro was on his feet, saluting Roy even though it looked as though it cost him some pride.

   
“General Mustang,” he said, his voice straining around the rank as though it was took real, physical effort to remain polite to Roy, “...I wasn't expecting you. Would you like Captain Hayes to fetch us so--”

   
“No thank you,” Roy said, coming to a sharp stop at his desk and tossing the discharge papers on top of the Hakuro's current paperwork, “I can't imagine you wouldn't be expecting me, after this latest attempt at subverting my authority.”

   
Hakuro glanced at the discharge papers, beady eyes swiftly reading the header and the Fuhrer's seal.

   
“An honorable discharge and a promotion? You'll have to congratulate him for me--”

   
“Your congratulations would ring a bit hollow, considering you made a valiant attempt at having him thrown into a mental asylum and denied the benefits that he's due,” Roy replied coldly, “Should I ask what your line of reasoning was for that? Or do I want to know?”

   
“...There were budgetary concerns--”

   
“Try me again,” Roy replied coolly, “Every other victim was granted their benefits. I checked.”

   
Hakuro went deadly silent for several long moments. His lips pursed around the edges, his dark brown eyes narrowing as he seemed to consider an inner monologue. Roy leaned forward, and he leaned back as if to avoid a blow.

   
“You understand that the _only_ reason you and your wife and your children are alive today is due to the efforts of Edward Elric?” Roy asked silkily, and Hakuro's gaze skittered away from him for a split second before darting back. “I can't imagine your attempt at having him locked up is entirely due to a need to save money. What was it then? Do you remain loyal to Bradley, and this is a way to get revenge in his name?”

   
“ _That is treason_ , and I will not admit to--”

   
“--Or is it an issue of pride? A need to sweep him under the rug so that you don't have to own up to the idea that you failed to protect your family and some scrawny teenager upstaged you?”

   
“--I am not _jealous_ of some upstart State Alchemist, if that is what you're attempting to imply--”

   
“Did you just prefer to see him suffer then? Did his belligerent behavior as a child anger and irritate you so much?”

   
Hakuro scowled furiously at Roy. His graying brows furrowed tightly over small, dark eyes.

   
“There were _budgetary concerns,_ ” he said, enunciating each syllable pointedly, “...And there was no fit guardian to take in Major Elric--”

   
“I've already put that answer off the table,” Roy interrupted. “ _Try again_.”

   
“...Elric was labeled a criminal no less than two years ago by the previous administration, and all of that got wiped away by Fuhrer Grumman,” Hakuro said quietly, coldly, “He and his brother both-- there were simply a lot of misgivings about his disappearance, and now this reappearance with Drachmans? Who's to say he wasn't assisting them? Why should he receive the same benefits as the other soldiers if there's suspicion still around him--”

   
Roy loomed dangerously over the desk, pulling the photos once more from his pocket. He held up the one of Edward being cut open, guts and organs seen by all. Hakuro looked at it, his whole body stiffening with affront at the sight. A grimace twisted his face as his fists clenched tighter at his sides.

   
Roy traded photos out for one of the ones of Edward being tortured. He let the chill he felt coiling in his chest seep into his voice as he found the words to speak.

   
“Does this look like cooperation to you?” he said quietly, putting away the photos when he cycled through them. He planted both hands on the desk and leaned forward, directly in Hakuro's face, “Consider this incident your one and _only_ warning. If you _ever_ attempt something like that with one of _my_ men again, I will not hesitate to make sure you're little more than a pile of ashes to be swept away; a forgotten remnant of Bradley's reign. Do I make myself _clear_?”

   
Hakuro's expression had gone a little gray at the threat, but he was still scowling. However, faced down with Roy's cold anger, the facts of Edward's discharge, and his lower rank, he didn't really have much of a hill to die on.

   
“Of course,” he finally grumbled, then caught Roy's eye. “...General Mustang, sir.”

   
Roy settled back, only somewhat appeased. After a moment, he continued.

   
“Fix the paperwork,” he ordered, “His discharge is honorable and there is no official suspicion surrounding his kidnapping. He's just like every other victim in that facility.”

   
“...Yes sir,” Hakuro said, sitting down at his desk and shuffling through his paperwork. “I'll have the new information regarding his benefits sent down to Veteran's Affairs. Who should I write in as his guardian to handle his affairs?”

   
“Myself,” Roy said stiffly, and Hakuro looked up sharply, “Seeing as how he's been discharged now, there's no chain of command issues to worry about; his brother is too young and his grandmother too old. Thanks to your interference he didn't have a lot of options left to him.”

   
"...Of course,” Hakuro replied stiffly, “...I wish you the best, General.”

   
Roy snorted at the sheer falseness of this, but did not bother to wish Hakuro a farewell as he left the man's office. Captain Hayes called a muted 'have a nice day, sir' behind him on his way out. Roy did not respond, letting the office door swing shut behind him with a slam.

   
Roy strode down the long hallways of Central Command. With every step, he let the coiling strands of his leftover rage ease out of him, not wanting to bring it back to his office with him. His staff were overtired and stressed enough without his anger to make it worse. No matter how much he would try to stifle and hide it, they would sense it, and the atmosphere in the office would only get worse.

   
Edward would get his justice, and he would get what he was due now too.

   
As his temper settled and his anger left him, Roy expected to feel as empty and light as he usually did when he vented his spleen-- instead, exhaustion flooded him, burning behind his eyes and weighing like lead in the base of his spine. All at once, his feet ached and he wanted little more than to collapse into his office chair and close his eyes. Roy had arrived in Central a mere two days ago and had been on his feet since, applying for Edward's guardianship, digging through resources for Ed and Al to use upon their return, and carefully sifting through the ever present pile of evidence from the facility.

   
It felt like every opened box revealed new horrors within, and Roy couldn't see an end in sight. It also didn't help, in spite of Vato's translations and everyone keeping their eyes peeled, that there seemed to be no mention of Muric Banner or Kendrick Minsk anywhere so far. Whatever had happened to the two State Alchemists was still a mystery-- and there was still suspicion as to which one-- or both-- had helped the construction of the facility.

   
Roy wanted desperately for it to be neither of them. He didn't want to have to bring that news to Miss Banner and break the old woman's heart, and he didn't want to have to face a decorated general down to tell him his son had betrayed his country.

   
Feeling more worn out than before he'd left to get Edward's discharge settled, Roy turned into the open door of his office. It was just as much a mess as Fuhrer Grumman's office was, piled high with boxes, paperwork, and files around every desk. There was more there than what they had brought back with them from North City. Apparently, at some point and without Roy's knowledge, North City Hospital had told Major Bloche to stop sending them his shit, and all evidence had been thereafter transferred to his office directly afterwards.

   
Walking in the first morning to multiple towers of even _more_ work had been an unpleasant surprise.

   
Roy looked tiredly at the stacks of boxes. He could build a whole other office at this point. He wanted desperately to go through all of this with his own two eyes, to stay involved in everything, but it was becoming quickly apparent that he was going to have to relegate beyond his personal staff.

   
Roy looked over at Vato. He was wearing a pair of clunky headphones, listening to a slowly turning recording and quickly transcribing everything he heard on a piece of paper. Everyone else was going through everything already translated, buried in their work.

   
Vato had shadows under his eyes, Roy noted. He was working double the hours, trying to continue providing material for everyone to go off of.

   
Intelligence would have translators, Roy surmised. He could call Alex. The man would be able to find help that he could trust with all the information likely contained within the evidence.

   
“Sir?”

   
Roy looked over at Riza. He realized, belatedly, that he'd been standing in the doorway of his office, leaning against the jamb and staring at Vato unblinkingly. Everyone else minus Vato-- who was still hunched over his translations, and Jean, who was still in North City with Alphonse and Edward-- was staring at him worriedly.

   
Roy straightened up.

   
“The Fullmetal Alchemist has been formally discharged from the military, _and_ is to receive full benefits and his pension as he is meant to,” Roy announced, letting his lip curl into a bit of a smile at everyone's sighs and huffs of relief. Fishing out good news in this sea of grief and misery and human cruelty seemed like a miracle. “I daresay the former Lieutenant Colonel and his family will be happy with this news.”

   
Breda snickered loudly at his desk, where he was sifting through his work even as they talked.

   
“ _Edward Elric_ got a promotion?” he asked, shaking his head, “...Never thought I'd see the day. You know he'd hate it.”

   
“I think I'm going to mount the promotion papers in a frame for my office,” Roy replied, smirking slightly in spite of himself- in spite of knowing exactly what had to happen for Edward to receive such a promotion. “It'll serve as a reminder that even the most absurd things can happen.”

   
There was a soft rumble of laughter from his men, and even Riza's mouth quirked a little. She was going through the translated medical files that had come with them from North City. Photos lay scattered across her desk and her russet brown eyes were dark with the knowledge of the depravity that she was reading.

   
Roy heaved a deep breath, shifting the papers under his arm. He looked at Riza.

   
“...I'm going to go down to Finance and ensure that Edward's promotion is sent through,” he said quietly to Riza, “...Then I'm going to Veteran's Affairs and make sure his discharge is handled _properly_. When I get back, I'm going to start back on the medical files so you can have a break from them, and—”

   
“--With all due respect, sir, I can handle this,” Riza said firmly, cutting Roy off. She held out her hand and it took Roy several gobsmacked moments to realize she was demanding Edward's paperwork. “And I'll take care of that for you too.”

   
Roy stared at her for several unblinking moments. The office had fallen quiet, everyone's gazes shifting between Roy and Riza.

   
“And what will be left for me to do?” he asked, rustling up the energy to manage a half-smile at her. “I can't just let my staff suffer on their own.”

   
“ _Your staff_ has been smart. We've all gone home and gotten sleep since we've returned to Central,” Riza said idly, “You've been pounding the pavement since we got back. How much sleep have you had since we arrived?”

   
Roy wasn't sure how best to answer that. On one hand, saying 'a few hours here and there' might be enough to make her point moot. On the other, admitting he'd been sleeping at his desk was liable to get him in Trouble.

   
Silence and pursed lips was enough of an answer, and Riza wiggled her fingers towards the papers in his arms. The sharpness was gone from her face, replaced with little more than worry and concern.

   
“Let us run things today,” she said quietly, “Go home. Get at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. You're going to miss important details if you go through this evidence on no rest.”

   
_That_ was enough to make Roy consider this a viable course of action. It was one thing to be tired-- it was entirely another to be so exhausted that he might miss something that could change the face of the investigation-- a name drop, a detail about the still-missing alchemists, _anything._

   
One missed note that could rob Edward of any justice Roy might have been able to afford him. _That_ idea curdled in the pit of his stomach, like sour bile.

   
He could fail himself however he liked. He couldn't fail these victims.

   
Roy held out the papers, and Riza took them with a grim smile in Roy's direction. He nodded at her in response.

   
“...I was also going to call Alex and see about wrangling some more translators that we can trust,” he said, watching as Riza tucked away Edward's paperwork into her desk. “If anybody has had as little sleep as myself, it's Vato. He needs a break.”

   
In response, Vato continued scribbling on the paper, mouthing the words as he translated along as fast as he could. He would go through every single recording at least four or five times to ensure that he got everything written down.

   
“That's a good idea,” Riza said, squinting over at Vato. No doubt that, once more interpreters were secured, Riza would turn her sights on him and throw him out of the office too. “...I'll call a driver to pick you up at the door and take you home. Good night, sir.”

   
Roy sighed in acquiescence. Crossing the office, he gathered his coat and scarf and slid them on. Encompassed in the warm knitted wool, Roy felt the tiredness seep into his bones. His feet suddenly felt heavier and harder to move.

   
A thought struck him as he got back to the door, and he turned to look at Riza.

   
“I received a packet from North City this morning,” he said, “I think it's lost somewhere in here, but I'm fairly certain it'll contain the details of Focke's discharge. If you could find it...?”

   
“I'll have it on your desk come morning, General Mustang,” Riza replied confidently. “...Good night, sir.”

   
“...Are you certain you don't need me?” Roy asked, trying not to let himself yawn halfway through that sentence. His jaw ached with the force of holding it in.

   
His vision was a little bleary around the edges now, but he could tell Riza was very clearly not fooled by his act. She gave him an unimpressed look, one that she'd been perfecting for a very long time.

   
“ _Good night, sir_.”

   
Roy sighed, buttoned up his coat and tucked in his scarf, then tugged his gloves on.

   
“Very well then, since I am being so bullied,” he cast Riza a grateful smile nonetheless, then looked over the rest of men. “Good night.”

   
There was a chorus of good nights from Breda and Fuery-- Riza's repeated one a little more forceful than the last, and Vato didn't even look up from his work. Casting one last look around the office and all of the evidence that he was leaving in the –albeit perfectly capable-- hands of his men, Roy slipped out the door.

   
Downstairs, Roy stepped out of the main entrance, shivering inside his jacket as a blast of cold wind hit him. Ice crunched beneath his feet as he walked down the stairs, and the sky overhead was a monotone gray. It felt like all the bad weather up north was scattering, spreading its misery around to the rest of the country.

   
True to her word, Riza had called a driver for him. The young woman was stamping her feet and had her hands tucked in her armpits in an attempt to stay warm, but snapped to attention the moment she saw Roy. Roy thanked her as she held his door open, sliding into the warm interior of the military car.

   
The ride home was mostly uneventful. They passed piles of shoveled snow along the streets, his driver making small talk the entire way. Roy mostly made polite sounds in response as he rested against the door of the car. The warmth and heat worked its way into his bones as they drove along, and soon he found his eyes closing of their own accord. The car engine and the driver's voice formed a soft background hum to sleep to, every bounce and bump dragging him back to the surface of wakefulness.

   
Eventually, the car slowed to a careful stop.

   
“Sir?”

   
Roy looked up, blinking away the fog of sleep as his driver got out and opened his door for him. He wondered, briefly, how dignified it would be for a general of the military to fall out of a car sideways as she did so. Thankfully his seatbelt prevented him from embarrassing himself too much, and he thanked her before slowly ambling up to his townhouse, nestled snugly between other houses of similar shape and size.

   
Small, anonymous, and unassuming. Roy rather liked his house, but a niggling thought had been sitting in the back of his brain lately. He was a general now, on a general's salary. He could afford to upgrade and had been able to for a while.

   
For the last year and a half, however, he had refrained-- he had kept his house, on the off chance hope that Edward would escape from where he had been held, that he'd find his way back. That he'd find Roy's house as a safe haven, and as an escape from whatever hell he was being kept in. How many times, in the first few weeks of Edward's disappearance, had Roy checked to see if the spare key was missing from its hidey-hole? How many times had he held his breath as he circled into his living room, hoping to see Edward, banged up and filthy but _alive_ , sprawled out on his couch?

   
Thinking back on the facility, how it was arranged-- the torture, the prison cells and horror contained within it, Roy realized what a far flung hope that had actually been.

   
Roy stepped inside his house, clicking on the lamp by the door. Yellow light flooded the room, revealing his suitcase still sitting on the sidetable, half open. He hadn't yet bothered to unpack, merely taking his toiletry bag to the bathroom. Roy hung his coat and scarf up and took his boots off, discarding them lazily on the door mat before he walked into the house.

   
It was habit that had him walking quietly at first, with his ear tilted up and listening for the sound of Alphonse quietly speaking on a phone, or the sound of his pen _scritchscratching_ notes and leads and ideas in his notebook. Roy climbed the stairs, glancing into the slightly ajar spare bedroom on his way by. Inside, Alphonse's bed was neatly made, the last pair of clothes he'd worn in Central was folded neatly on the corner of the desk they had managed to catty-corner into the room.

   
In contrast, Edward's bed was a mess of rumpled sheets and blankets. Roy had made it himself, the first few times, only to find that when he looked again, it was all mussed up. The only conclusion he was able to come to was that either Al was sleeping in Ed's bed, taking in what very little he had left of his brother, or that Al was messing up the blankets on purpose to make it look like Ed was there.

   
...Neither of those options seemed like very healthy coping mechanisms, but Roy supposed it was a moot point now.

   
Roy looked around the room. It was cluttered, filled with as much of the brothers' belongings that he and Al had managed to squeeze in from the Elric's old apartment. Roy had also managed to fit their furniture in his basement, but it was spilling over into the rest of the townhouse. He had two end-tables in the living room, the Elric's handmade one awkwardly shoved between his recliner and the wall.

   
Books were virtually _everywhere_ too, lining every available surface and stacked in corners. The Elrics had bought up and secreted away an unfathomable amount of books over the years, Roy had realized. It explained where a large part of Edward's funding went.

   
Roy looked around the room again. There was barely enough space to fit a human body, much less two. And there was certainly no room for a wheelchair, which Edward would likely need for a long time. The stairs would make it hard for him to get around too. Roy had no intention of keeping Edward isolated away from everybody-- he'd need his personal space, but he'd need the company of people around him too.

   
He ought to be able to move as he needed, as he pleased-- a right that had been denied to him for too long now.

   
Roy stepped away from the spare bedroom and continued on down the hall. Theoretically, he could try to change the stairs into a ramp. He wasn't sure how well it would work though-- there was only so much space he could work with before he would be transmuting into his neighbor's house. And as nice and sweet as Miss Finch was, he doubted the little old lady would appreciate him elbowing a ramp into her bathroom.

   
And in any case, his last attempt at altering his stairs had ended rather... unfortunately.

   
In his own bedroom, Roy pulled off his uniform and readied himself for bed. It was tempting to throw his uniform carelessly on the floor, to forget all decorum and just fall into bed, but he had to be at work come the next day.

   
In fact, Roy would be at work nearly every day, up until they had processed all the evidence, figured out what had happened to Kendrick Minsk or Muric Banner, and then sent everything relevant to the Drachman infiltration to Major General Armstrong.

   
Roy felt the weight in his spine increase, the burning behind his eyes becoming nearly unbearable as he carefully stripped his uniform off and hung it up in its place on his closet door. He swept the cavalry skirt out to keep it from wrinkling up, then, wearing nothing but his boxers and his button-up shirt, Roy collapsed sideways onto his bed.

   
He laid there for a long few minutes, letting his weight sink into the familiar comfort of his mattress and blankets. His mind skittered here and there, no longer as focused or sharp as it had been earlier. The scene in Hakuro's office felt like years ago now. Central Command and his office and all the misery it contained, packed neatly into boxes, felt like a thousand miles away.

   
He had left his lamp on downstairs. Roy contemplated getting it, but found himself rolling over in the bed instead to pull his comforter around himself.

   
He let his mind wander back to the spare bedroom, rolled up in his blanket and face-half buried in his pillow. He was now Edward's actual guardian, in the sense that he was in charge of actually ensuring his well-being.

   
If his house wasn't going to be good enough, then he would have to simply buy a new house.

   
With a mental note to consult a realty agent come morning, Roy closed his eyes finally and let the warm curtain of sleep fall over him.

 

* * *

 

 The voices were low and quiet, muffled through the door. Havoc sat in the side chair by Ed's bed, head tilted as he tried to make out what was being said between Alphonse and his two chimera compatriots. The large duo had been hanging around in the peripheral of things this whole time-- watching and waiting for _something_. Today though, they seemed ready to leave.

   
Al's voice, higher and clearer than either Darius or Heinkel's, rose up. Havoc strained to hear exactly what was said, but was still unable to catch it. The hospital walls and doors were solid enough to blot out the sounds of the doctors, nurses, and staff going about in their everyday hubbub.

   
Havoc drummed his fingers on the metal side rails of Ed's bed. He was the only one left here to guard Al and Ed, which meant that for at least eight hours everyday, Alphonse was completely unattended. He'd managed to convince some of the nurses to keep an eye out and update him if Al acted _too_ strangely, but he wasn't entirely sure if they would actually report anything. There was a certain patient-family sanctity in hospitals that he wouldn't be capable of influencing.

   
Havoc looked over at Ed. He'd taken up near-constant residence on the side of the bed closest to the wall, his casted arm tucked close to him as he stared into the corner. He hadn't said much of anything over the last few days and rarely looked away from the corner, much less made eye contact with anybody. He flinched away from touch still, and kept himself curled under the comforter he'd been given.

   
Havoc resisted the urge to reach out and prod him, in some far-flung hope that the old Ed he knew would whip around with a scowl and a few colorful words for him. Edward had a long way to go before he was physically recovered, much less mentally, and the only thing he could do was give him the room for it.

   
The door squealed open. Havoc turned to see Al coming in with a tired smile, and a nurse pushing a wheelchair.

   
“Darius and Heinkel are going to head on home now,” Al explained as the nurse pushed the chair over to Ed's bedside. Havoc go out of her way as she lowered the side rail. “...We found Brother, so I guess they feel like their job is done.”

   
“They're pretty gruff about the whole thing,” Havoc pointed out, “They were barely in here for more than a few minutes at a time.”

   
Al gave his brother a quietly distressed look. He'd been sporting the look lately, and every time a new quirk of Edward's cropped up made it worse.

   
“I think they were a bit too intimidating,” Al said quietly, “Brother was afraid of them-- more afraid than usual, I mean. ...It probably hurts, seeing him like this. I don't blame them. They did ask for progress reports though, and I can't ask them to hang around forever for us.”

   
Havoc hummed quietly under his breath in a noncommittal reply, too busy watching as the nurse tried to first coax Ed with gentle cajoling to come closer to her. When that didn't work, she tugged on the sheets a little in encouragement, trying to slide Ed across the bed. Edward did not react to either attempts, however, staring steadfastly at the wall.

   
Giving up on her attempts, the nurse looked over at Alphonse.

   
“We're going to have his arm scanned. If it was something we could do while he's in the bed, we would,” she explained. “If you can convince him into the wheelchair, that would ease the process along a lot better than sedating him.”

   
Al grimaced, then slowly climbed onto the edge of the bed. He reached out towards his brother with cautious hands.

   
“Brother?” he tried carefully. Ed didn't react. “...Brother, why don't you come over here for us? We want to have a look at your arm and see how well its doing. It's going to be okay...”

   
Al touched Ed, one hand on his side and the other on his thigh. Ed immediately curled in on himself, flinching back so hard he rattled the side rails on the other side of the bed. He huddled in a small ball, his one leg curled up tight to his chest as he tried to keep away from Al's questing grasp.

   
“Brother,” Al continued, using the slow and steady method as he inched his way across the bed. Ed inched his way back at the same time until he hit a point where he couldn't escape any further. Finally, he turned wide yellow eyes on Al. His pupils were dilated, and the blank look on his face was replaced by something Havoc could only identify as sheer terror.

   
“Brother--”

   
Ed lashed out finally, kicking out against Al and throwing out his casted arm in an attempt at defending himself. Al immediately grabbed for it, trying not to let him move his arm in a way that would cause more damage. The nurse rounded the bed, providing an anchor to keep Ed from pushing his way off the side entirely. In response, Ed slammed back against the mattress, back arching up as he struggled to escape Alphonse. The first broken whimpers and hard panting began to escape his mouth as he squeezed his eyes shut and continued thrashing away from Al.

   
Havoc hung next to the bed, arms out, wanting to help but not wanting to hinder either. He wobbled nervously for several long seconds as the fight on the bed continued. Right as he was about to move around to Ed's shoulder to help Al manhandle him off the bed, Ed's eyes flashed open.

   
They didn't look at him, nor at Al or the nurse. They flickered over to the wheelchair, and Havoc could read the panic and fear building in Ed's expression with every passing moment.

   
Havoc looked over at the wheelchair. The memory of the wheelchairs he'd spotted in the facility-- folded up and tucked off to the side-- shone a dim light on Ed's fit. Straps and clasps and chains had been present on all of them, turning a mobility aid into an instrument of restraint and torture.

   
Havoc sat down in the wheelchair.

   
He'd never really wanted to do that again, but here he was.

  
“Hey,” he called over the fuss of mattress springs and blankets being shoved around, “ _Hey!”_

   
Alphonse stopped struggling with Ed for a moment, looking back at Havoc with a baffled expression. Ed kicked out at him and Al had to wrestle Ed's remaining leg under his weight to keep him from doing it again.

   
“Hey, Little Boss--” Havoc tried, resting his hands on the arms of the wheelchair. “Ed. Hey, Ed. C'mon, look over here. Ed--!”

   
After some coaxing, Ed's struggles fell still. A few minutes after that, he finally looked over in Havoc's direction. His eyes were wide and glassy, lips parted as he panted out small gasps. He almost didn't seem to see Havoc sitting there, like he was looking at him but seeing something else entirely.

   
“Hey, hey--” Havoc continued, pitching his voice quiet and soft, trying to get Edward to _come back_ to them, to actually _see_ him. “Ed. Won't you look over here? You see me? You see this wheelchair? Hey, Ed...”

   
Havoc talked and greeted Ed for several long minutes, waiting for the hysteria of Ed's panic to fade, and for the yellow eyes to start focusing in on him. Eventually, Edward lay silent and still on the bed, his gaze a little sharper than what it was.

   
Beside him on the bed, Alphonse stayed perfectly still. He even seemed to be holding his breath in anticipation of whatever Havoc was trying to do.

   
Havoc moved his arms off the armrests, showing Ed how he wasn't restrained. He kicked his legs, hopping up and down inside the wheelchair. He even stood, trying not to wince when Edward flinched at the sudden movement. He sat back down and rolled his shoulders, resting his elbows on the arm rests and his hands in his lap.

  
“See?” he said, holding up his hands again and showing Edward how they were free to move as he willed. “There's no straps. No cuffs. You're not going to be tortured, alright?”

   
Ed stared at him unblinkingly. At least, Havoc reasoned, some of the fear had left his expression. Carefully, he climbed back to his feet, using slow, easy movements as he walked around the wheelchair and patted the arm.

   
“There's nothing there that's gonna hurt you,” Havoc continued, looking over at Al for a bit of support, “It's not gonna hurt you, Boss.”

   
Alphonse, with careful, light touches, gently hugged his brother, shifting so that his back was against his chest. Ed didn't fight him, still breathing heavily as he looked at the wheelchair.

   
“It's going to be okay, Brother,” he promised softly, sweeping some of the sweaty, messy hair away from Ed's ear, “It's not bad, alright? You can get out of it whenever you want. They're just gonna check your arm and bring you right back.”

   
Carefully, after a few more minutes of gentle coaxing, Al began to slide Ed towards the wheelchair. Edward made smaller whimpering sounds, but didn't struggle as Al and the nurse carefully finagled him off the bed. Havoc came around and caught his left leg, helping to maneuver it so that the port spreader still inside wasn't jostled by the trip down.

   
When Ed was set inside the wheelchair, he became stock still, his reddened fingers clenching tightly in the blanket he had dragged down with him. His breathing started to become harder, the panting a little more intense as Al tried to tug the comforter from his hand with no success. Seeing Ed clutch it tightly to himself, however, Havoc looked at the nurse.

   
“Is it okay if he has the blanket?” he asked, “It won't be in the way, will it?”

   
“It should be fine. I'm sure we'll be able to do the scans around it,” the nurse replied briskly, and Havoc and Al helped to tuck and bundle the blanket around Ed. Once securely wrapped, Ed went quiet again, relaxing into the tight confines of the blanket. Al reached out and gently brushed Ed's mussed hair out of his face.

   
“Alright, Brother,” Al said quietly, kneeling down awkwardly between the bed and the wheelchair so that Ed, eyes still averted, was looking at him. “The nurse is going to take you back to get your arm scanned, alright? It's not going to be too awful long, and you'll be able to come back here and lay down again as soon as you're done.”

   
Al laid a hand on Ed's knee. Ed seemed to shrink inside of his blanket, so Al gently squeezed his knee one last time and let go, standing up to nod at the nurse. Cautiously, the nurse unlatched the wheelchair brakes and pushed Ed out of the room.

   
Ed didn't even look back at them as the door swung shut behind him. Havoc wondered, briefly, what was going on in Ed's head-- if maybe he thought he was simply being pushed back to a torture cell, that there was no point fighting and fussing over what was an inevitability, or even looking to his brother for help.

   
Havoc glanced over at Al's face, and it was obvious by his expression that he was thinking the exact same thing. With a sigh, Havoc slowly sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed. Before he could say anything to Al, however, the door reopened and Winry walked in, accompanied by Paninya and followed closely by Doctor Franz.

   
Winry looked over at Al.

   
“...We saw them taking Ed,” she said quietly.

   
“They're scanning his arm,” Alphonse explained, nodding over at Dr. Franz, who was leaning against the nearby cabinets and rifling through some papers. “Doctor?”

   
“We got the results of his hearing test we managed to do yesterday,” Franz replied, reaching up to tuck some gray-blonde hair behind her ear. “Luckily, he appears to have retained his hearing in his right ear.”

   
“And his left?” Alphonse asked, the dread obvious in his voice.

   
“Damaged,” Franz said, squinting at the papers. Havoc could see a chart printed on the paper, with dots scattershot across the lines. “As long as there's proper cleaning, I don't see a need for an invasive surgery, but it looks like he can no longer hear lower and deeper tones, according to the test.”

   
“Oh,” Winry said quietly, “But he can still hear most everything, then?”

  
“That's good news, right?” Paninya asked, smiling hopefully at the doctor. She jostled Winry's arm in a cajoling fashion.

   
“Of a sort,” Dr. Franz glanced up at the two for a split second, “There's now the potential that the situation will deteriorate and he'll lose all of his hearing as he ages, and he's going to be extremely prone to infections from here on out. He-- and you, by extension-- will have to get comfortable with checking and treating his ears.”  
 

Al's face paled a little at this. They had managed to get him into the wheelchair after a bit of fuss, but thus far they had not gotten Ed to lay still to have anyone mess with his ears. It was a struggle every time.

   
“Right,” he managed, then started when Dr. Franz held out an envelope to him with a quick flick of the hand. He took it, flipping it over to read the address on the front. “...Oh. This is from the custody office.”

  
“I got some paperwork declaring Roy Mustang as your brother's guardian,” Dr. Franz said, straightening up and tucking all the papers into a tray on the cabinet. “I suspect that it's going to inform you of the same thing. You understand of course, that all medical information and decisions are going to be relayed to Mustang now, right?”

   
“I understand,” Al replied quietly. Franz looked at him for a long moment, then cast the room a narrow look before wishing them well and dismissing herself.

   
Silence reigned as the door swung shut behind her. After a moment, Paninya stepped across the small room to the cabinet, grabbing the papers that Franz had set in the tray. Her footsteps were heavy on the tiled floor, but Al had focused on her nosing through the paperwork.

   
“Paninya, what are you _doing_?”

   
“What?” Paninya asked innocently, “Honestly, Al. She wouldn't have left them here if she didn't want you to look at them.”

   
Al perked up considerably, moving over to Paninya's side. Winry joined them a second later. Havoc sighed, then laid back on Ed's bed and looked up at the ceiling as the three murmured between them.

   
“Megestrol acetate?” Winry asked quietly, “...That's an appetite stimulant, isn't it?”

   
“They haven't been able to get him to eat anything the normal way,” Alphonse replied quietly, “And he needs more than a liquid diet now. Dr. Franz said that she wants to get him started on shakes and small things to keep him from shutting down, or going into refeeding syndrome and having his organs start failing.”

   
“He's so starved though, and he could outeat a horse,” Paninya pointed out, “How is he not hungry?”

   
“He's been forcefed for a year and a half; it might be that he's hungry and is afraid to try actually eating, or that he just doesn't have the stomach for it. Dr. Franz said that the pain medications can kill his appetite too, so she's started weaning him off of it,” Alphonse murmured back, flipping through the papers quickly. His yellow eyes flickered back and forth, absorbing as much information as possible. “His teeth are bad too. We're going to have to find him a very understanding dentist when we get back to Central.”  
 

“His teeth...?” Winry pulled the chart towards herself. “What happened to them?”

  
“He wasn't able to brush his teeth for a year and a half, and the forcefeeding caused him to throw up often enough that there's acid damage on his lower teeth,” Alphonse worried his bottom lip for a moment. “I'm going to try and get a letter out to Mei here soon, and see if she can recommend an alkhestrist that can fix teeth. He might be much more comfortable with that than a dentist coming at him with medical tools and needles.”

  
The three pored over the medical files and charts, quickly taking in what was written there of Edward's tortures. Mustang would likely share any and everything with Al anyways, Havoc considered, but he supposed it was a good thing that Al had his information up front like this too, keeping him up to date in the second.

   
The three quietly went through the medical papers together, pointing out different things and murmuring about them between each other. Havoc almost missed the sound of the door knob turning, but Al-- hypervigilant, it seemed-- heard instantly. He had the papers stacked neatly back in their file holder before the door was even cracked.

   
It was the nurse, returning with Edward. His hair and blanket were a little mussed and he looked as though he'd struggled a little more with the nurse. Nevertheless, the nurse smiled cheerfully at them. Havoc sat back up and moved off the bed, making room for her to come over and sweep the sheets smooth,  


“...Well, it was a little tough, but we did get that arm scanned,” she said, “It doesn't look like there's been any complications, and the malunion surgery seems to have gone well. No abnormal swelling. Usually there's about a ten week healing period for these sorts of things and he's right on track with that.”  
 

“Thank you,” Alphonse said cautiously, watching as the nurse tucked the file of x-rays over in the tray with the rest of the mounting paperwork. He began to start gathering Ed up, but she stopped him before he could get his hands underneath the blanket.  
 

“We have an atrium,” the nurse pointed out, and Al stared at her blankly, “When you live as far north as this, we have to make do with what the weather allows, but there's a wheelchair walk and an indoor garden in the atrium that would be nice to stroll through. Why don't you try walking your brother around there, so he can get used to the wheelchair? If the only time he's in it is for medical procedures, he'll always be afraid of it.”  
 

“That--” Al looked over at Havoc. He nodded. “--Thank you. That sounds like a good idea.”  
 

The nurse fussed about a little longer, straightening Ed's blanket and making sure his bandages were tucked in cleanly underneath his hospital gown. When she left, Winry stepped up and knelt down in front of the wheelchair.  
 

“It's safe to take this out now,” she said, carefully unwinching the spreader that she'd put inside of Ed's automail port. Ed flinched back into his wheelchair, but Winry stayed steady and calm, making the process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Paninya pulled the toolbox out of under the bed and Winry put the spreader away, then pulled out several tools and proceeded to quickly click the automail port back into place and tighten up all the screws and extra bits. Havoc stared over her shoulder, trying to understand everything she was doing before giving up. Automail was an art and a science combined and Winry was its master, and he had no hope of figuring it out.  
 

When she was done, Winry tucked the blanket around and under the port, making sure it didn't hang down to get caught in the wheels. With a smile, she reached up and tucked some of Ed's uneven hair out of his face. Yellow eyes stared back at her unblinkingly. Ed's mouth was set in a thin line and his face was blank, but his body stayed tense and uncomfortable in the wheelchair.  
 

Winry looked over at Al, straightening up from where she was kneeling. She picked up the toolbox and rested it on the bed. Beside her, Paninya picked up the box containing Edward's automail and did the same thing.  
 

“I'll have to go back to Rush Valley here soon,” she explained, “...Garfiel's handling all my routine calls but I've got to go back to handle my major clients-- and I've got to give Ed's automail situation some consideration.”  
 

“Is he going to be able to wear it?” Alphonse asked softly. He'd seen it before, people who couldn't wear automail anymore-- the elderly who became too fragile to bear it, the injured and ill who couldn't handle the extra strain. Ed's body condition certainly put him in the latter category.  
 

“I'm going to try and avoid that,” Winry replied, crossing her arms. Her brow was furrowed, and Havoc recognized it as the same look that Ed had gotten on his face when considering an alchemic question that Mustang or some case had presented him with. Al mirrored the same look fairly often, Havoc realized. The three blondes were all peas in a pod when it came to solving problems.  
 

“Ed's been through enough,” Winry was continuing, “And having surgery to remove the ports might just wind up being a bigger strain on him. We'll leave off the limbs for as long as he's doing well right now, and I'm going to see about making him some lighter prosthetics that might make mobility and physical therapy better for him. I've got his new measurements now so I can build without you having to try and travel him all the way to Rush Valley.”  
 

“Are you two leaving now?” Alphonse asked, standing behind Ed's wheelchair and resting his hands on the handles. “Or do you think you could walk with us in the atrium for a little bit?”  
 

Winry smiled at him.  
 

For Ed, the trip back out of the room made his stomach drop. He didn't want to leave the safety of the room, he didn't want to be wheeled back out into the hallway. Every person that walked by, their hospital scrubs swishing softly as they moved, made him cringe. Every small bump under the wheels of his chair sent a new jolt of panic through him.  
 

His bed was, relatively speaking, _safe_. Out here, he couldn't stop what happened to him. He had no control over where he was going.  
 

Ed fell back into his chair and let himself go limp, but kept the blanket tucked tight around himself. It felt better, it felt less like he was open to the world, when he had something to act as a shield against everything around him.  
 

A few turned hallways, and a roundabout which resulted in directions being asked for, and they got to the atrium that his nurse had mentioned. The creeping feeling of paranoia got _worse_ , beginning with an itch over his skin until his heart pounded and it felt like he was struggling to take breath. The atrium was wide and open, with a high glass ceiling that let the light of the sun pour in.  
 

Ed wanted to lay in that sun. He wanted to bask in it, to enjoy the natural light for as long as he was allowed. What he didn't want was the openness, the vast emptiness overhead. He ached to go back to his room, for the safety of the ceiling and his ceiling tiles and how he could see all four walls at once and nobody could walk up on him.  
 

Instead, the wheels of his chair hit a smooth walkway, and the door leading to the somewhat more enclosed hallways was gone behind him. They walked alongside a low brick wall, which only just held the teeming plant life and such from spilling out into the walkway. Ed barely noticed though. Cold sweat had broken out across his skin and he was starting to shiver uncontrollably, freezing in spite of being wrapped in the blanket.  
 

“Brother?”  
 

The wheelchair came to a slow stop. Alphonse knelt down in front of him. His brother's yellow eyes looked up at him, a line furrowing between his brows. There were shadows under his eyes, worry lines etched in places where they hadn't been when Ed had last seen Al. Even his mouth, which had been perpetually curved in a carefree smile, was now an anxious, troubled frown.  
 

That hurt. Ed wanted to reach out, wanted desperately to take his brother's hand and reassure him that he was okay, that he was fine, that this was okay--  
 

\--but every touch made his skin crawl, made him itch like ants marching inside his body. Everytime he thought to open his mouth, to speak out or say _anything_ , terror coiled up inside him, locking his jaw and his voice inside his throat. He couldn't speak, couldn't betray himself like that because the next time he spoke it would be to beg for mercy, to cave in finally to all the misery and pain, and he couldn't-- he'd _sworn_ he wouldn't break and--  
 

\--there were hands on his shoulders. Ed squeezed his eyes shut and immediately tried to blot out the fine threads of panic as they wove through him.  
 

 _Make it stop, please stop, don't touch don't don't don't please sir, no sir no sir no sir no sir no sir--_  


The blanket was being tugged free of his shoulders and Ed let out a heaving gasp. He didn't want them to take the blanket, he _needed_ it, he needed the weight of the comforter around him, and--  
 

The blanket was being tugged over his head. For a horrible second, Ed thought they were going to smother him with it, envelope him in darkness and provide him with the mercy killing he'd prayed for in the past.  
 

Instead though, the blanket was pulled low enough over his eyes that the overhead ceiling was blotted out of his vision. The only thing he could see was the walkway, directly in front of him, and quilted blanket. The rest of the blanket was repositioned and tucked tightly around him again, and after several minutes of silence, the panic that had been building up inside him like a well slowly bubbled back down. It still sat, like black rot in his core, but it wasn't pressing the urge to scream onto him anymore.  
  


Alphonse was still crouched in front of him.  
 

“Is that better, Brother?”  
 

Ed--  
 

\--nodded.  
 

Then froze, heart slamming in his ears again. He'd responded, and he'd learned that a nod was as good as a word, and he was going to be pushed for more-- punished for not being respectful, _he hadn't even used 'sir' he was going to be in so much pain when this was through_ , he couldn't--  
 

Al didn't lash out though. He scarcely moved, even. His expression became a little less tired, a little warmer around the edges, and something like relief edged into the bitter lines around his mouth as he allowed a soft smile to curl his lips.  
 

“Alright,” Al said, standing up and moving out of Ed's vision. His hand drifted across Ed's knee on his way by, and a moment later, the wheelchair began its smooth progression back down the walkway. Ed huddled in his spot for several long minutes, not moving, not raising his eyes from the fixed point in front of him. Around him, his brother, Winry, and Paninya talked quietly over his head, their voices filling the quiet of the atrium. Somewhere off to the side Havoc was a constant, quiet presence.  
  


Eventually, after some time of being pushed along the low garden wall, Ed slowly let his vision travel away from the ground. In spite of the high ceiling overhead, the air managed to be warm and comfortable, and eventually-- when he wasn't struck or electrocuted or spoken harshly to-- Edward found himself slowly relaxing back in seat..The hospital he was in had a very nice indoor garden-- at least in comparison to East City's hospitals and the backalley doctors he'd frequented in the past. Tall grasses, blooming flowers, and large elephant ears poured out all over the place, with signs pointing out and labeling anything exotic and interesting.  
  


The wheelchair moved slowly, and Edward found his eyes fixated on a large boat-shaped leaf, extending far enough out to touch. Ed didn't reach for it, prefering to keep his casted arm tucked close to his midsection, but he watched the play of yellow light off the green leaf, feeling the warmth of the sun as it rested in slants and slivers over his blanket.  
 

“It's a banana tree plant, from Aruego,” Alphonse said over his head, pointing out a small sign next to the plant Ed was looking at. “It says it can grow twenty feet tall and has leaves about eight feet long. I guess this one's not full grown yet.”  
 

Edward stayed quiet, then slowly let himself nod again. Alphonse, thankfully, made no comment or fuss over it.  
 

Thus, a game of sorts started as they quietly wheeled around the wheelchair path. Alphonse pointed out any plant that Edward took a vague interest in, reading off the plaques that identified each one. Various kinds of elephant ear plants passed them by, many bright green, some dark purple and another that was watermelon red in the center. Ferns were quickly identified and checked off, and Ed found himself transfixed by the flame-like bursts of glory lilies that spilled out of the greenery.  
  


It was a sight different than the white and gray cell he'd grown accustomed to, and with every identified plant, Ed hesitantly nodded. He wasn't pushed for more, wasn't pressed in any way, and the tight coil of terror that had wound itself into his center slowly began to ease.  
  


Finally, they wound their way back to the beginning of the walkway, and back into the main hospital proper. The walls and ceiling closed in on Ed once more. Ceiling tiles passed overhead and Ed watched the concrete floor disappear beneath his wheelchair until they once more arrived at his room. He was wheeled up to his bed and the chair turned for easy access.  
 

Al's hand brushed against the arm of his chair, then Al was crouching again by his leg. Ed looked at him from underneath the cover of his blanket.  
 

“Brother, are you ready to lay down again?”  
 

He was, Ed realized, as Winry and Paninya picked up the toolboxes that they had left on the bed. He felt strangely worn out in spite of having done almost nothing, and it felt like a weight was pressing down on him. His chest and shoulders were starting to ache in earnest and he wanted little more now than to curl up and go back to sleep.  
 

As if sensing his thoughts, Alphonse smiled at him again and straightened up. With carefully moving, open hands, he gathered up Ed's upper body-- still wrapped in the blanket-- and Havoc moved to Ed's lower half and helped there. Quickly enough that Ed's heart barely had time to start racing at the feeling of rough hands gripping his thigh and ankle, they had him transferred over onto the bed. Ed found his corner quickly and curled himself up in, letting his head fall into the soft pillow. He closed his eyes and laid very still as hands straightened his blanket out, ensuring that it was tucked under and around his foot and automail port, keeping him warm and protected.  
 

A light brush of fingers on his forehead. Ed's gut clenched and he opened his eyes to see Winry leaning over him, tucking his hair from his face. She withdrew quickly, but reached down and pulled his blanket up to his chin for him.  
 

“I'll see you around, alright Ed?” she said quietly. Her smile didn't quite reach her blue eyes, turned stormy gray in the light of the hospital room. “You take care of Alphonse, and I'll be back with some automail that you can use in no time.”  
  


Ed swallowed, carefully rolling onto his side so his back was to the wall. He turned his gaze down and away. Above him, Winry let out a soft breath through her nose and stepped back, and then the mattress tilted a little as Alphonse sat down. His brother laid one hand on the bed in front of Edward, so he could see it.  
 

“Get some rest, Brother,” Alphonse said in a quiet tone, “Lieutenant Havoc and I are going to go get something to eat. We might have overdone the wheelchair walk a bit, if you're already half-asleep.”  
 

Ed couldn't bring himself to mind. To be fair, he couldn't really bring himself to look up either. His body felt as heavy as lead and his eyes burned with tiredness-- a real exhaustion, not a false one brought about by drugs and unrestful, tormented burn-out. Everything seemed to move extra slowly around him, as there was shuffling and soft talking over his head. Goodbyes seemed to be being said, but Edward's vision was going hazy. He closed his eyes just as everything finally went quiet.  
  


The hospital lights overhead, which had been burning brightly into his eyelids, dimmed down to soft darkness. Ed heard the click of the door shutting, and nothing else.  
 

Ed shifted, tugging his blanket as close to his chest as he could as he finally went to sleep.

 

* * *

  

Al and Havoc walked Winry and Paninya halfway to the doors on their way out of the hospital. Winry looked-- okay. Relief lined her expression, but there was a darker look hidden behind her eyes that she didn't talk about. Like someone had carved a deep hole in her. Paninya shot Al a quick look over her shoulder on their way out-- a promise, Al hoped, that she'd be able to take care of Winry and winch the grief out of her, to expose it to light and make it something easier to bear, and-- if not fill in that hole, then build a framework to help keep it from caving in.  
  


Al wasn't sure if he could do the same for himself, if he was being completely honest with himself.  
 

“Lunch?” Havoc suggested over his shoulder, interrupting his heavy thoughts. “There's a good Aruegan cafe on the corner.”  
 

“That sounds really good,” Al replied, his voice sounding distant even to himself. A niggling thought came back to him. “...I have to call the General though. I guess if he got custody of Brother, then Brother's discharge has gone through.”  
 

The two of them walked down to the phone alcove. Respectfully, Havoc hung out near the entrance as Al sat down at a booth. He held the phone up to his face and began to turn the rotary.  
 

The phone rang three times before it was picked up.  
  


“ _...General Roy Mustang speaking_.”  
 

“General,” Alphonse said, noting the roughness of Mustang's voice and the bleary noise the man made in response to Al's greeting. “You sound tired.”  
  
_“...I'm not, in fact. I've gotten so much sleep I don't quite know what to do with myself_ ,” Mustang said after a moment, _“...Captain Hawkeye has determined that I am in dire need a sort of mini vacation. I show up at the office every day and she boots me back out until some predetermined time in the future when I will be allowed back in.  
  
_

Alphonse snorted.  
 

“If your voice is any indicator, I'd guess showing up at the office with all your buttons done up wrong and stubble on your face is probably the reason she keeps throwing you back out,” he said, smirking a bit at the insulted noise that Mustang made. He probably wasn't too far off the mark with his description, if the man wasn't putting up too much of a fuss about it. “I got the letter from the Custody office. I haven't opened it yet, but Dr. Franz said it was good news.”  
 

“ _I do have custody over Edward now,”_ Mustang said, clearing his throat a little, _“And he's been officially discharged from the military, benefits pending. When I get his pension and benefits paperwork in the mail, I'll go over them with you. He was also promoted to Lieutenant Colonel before his discharge, courtesy of the Fuhrer.”  
_  

Al--  
 

\--laughed, if a little bitterly. Mustang sighed softly at the sound of it.  
 

“ _I know it's not a consolation by any means, or a fix to everything that's happened-- and if it manages to be an apology, it's a particularly shitty one, but Edward will get more significant post-retirement benefits with a promotion.”  
_  

That _did_ feel particularly shitty. Al knew, if Edward were up to it, he would absolutely protest the promotion. He would protest that a private deserved the exact same benefits as a general, if not _more_.  
  


“ _I've also come into contact with a hospital--”  
_  

Alphonse felt his gut clench, and his fingers tightened around the phone so hard he thought he heard the bakelite creak.  
 

“You promised,” he managed to croak. “You said if you had custody you wouldn't lock him up-- you said I had the final word on that--”  
 

“ _\--Alphonse,”_ Mustang's voice was sharp now, instead of gravelly and tired, _“...This isn't an asylum or a ward. I'm not locking your brother up in another padded cell. This is a hospital, and he wouldn't even be staying there, not any longer than a week for observations sake. They provide actual mental care there, and there's psychiatrists and therapists available to help him. I was able to get into contact with one therapist that's done work with military POWs before. She's agreed to set up appointments with him after a consultation.”  
  
_

Alphonse sat in silence for several long minutes, eyes closed, breathing out slowly. The low roar of anger had risen to the surface far faster than it normally would. Maybe he needed to de-stress too. Maybe he needed more sleep, or a vacation.  
 

The idea of a vacation seemed so far off though, what with his brother laying so pale and thin in his hospital bed.  
 

“I'm sorry,” he said finally, working his jaw. “If I've been-- If I've been sharper than necessary, or-- for jumping to conclusions. I'm sorry.”  
 

“ _It's understandable,”_ Mustang said, his voice even and calm as if nothing had happened. _“It's quite alright. I won't make the decision without you. I've got the information packet from the hospital with me that you can go through when you and Edward return to Central.”  
_  

“Alright; thank you,” Alphonse said quietly, “I'll have a look when we get back home. You said there would be an observation period, though?”  
 

“ _It says about three days to a week, depending on the severity of the situation,”_ Mustang said, _“I saw the hospital rooms-- they're not cells. There's a bed and a desk and any amenity he would need for a short stay. It's purely to see what his habits are and to get an idea of where to start in therapy. The therapist said they start with a consultation meeting so that everyone is on the same page. I wouldn't agree to anything without you.”  
_  

“...Thank you,” Alphonse repeated, taking another deep breath. “And thank you for taking care of Brother's paperwork and things for him. That's a lot off my mind.”  
 

“ _It's no problem, Alphonse.”  
_  

They talked for only a little bit longer, Alphonse remaining concious of his growling stomach and Havoc still standing at the alcove entrance. Eventually they wished each other well and Alphonse hung up the phone.  
 

Havoc turned when he approached, grinning crookedly around an unlit cigarette at him.  
 

“Everything alright?” he asked.  
 

“Brother was discharged as a Lieutenant Colonel,” Alphonse said, ignoring Havoc undignified snort of laughter at the news of Edward's promotion. “General Mustang's taking care of things... though it sounds like it's at the expense of his own sleep.”  
  


“Little Boss wasn't quite like the rest of the staff, but he fit into the puzzle just the same,” Havoc said as they walked quickly through the hospital, “And Mustang's just as loyal to his men as we are to him. He'd do the same for any one of us. He _did_ do the same thing for me, when I was in the hospital. All my bills were taken care of, and he made sure I was put on medical leave indefinitely instead of just discharged.”  
 

Alphonse absorbed that as they reached the hospital entrance. Outside, the sky was still a cloudy, dark gray, but at least it was no longer spitting snow down on them in buckets. Said ice and snow was built up in piles along the city streets, turned black from dirt and engine oil. The wind cut through Al and he huddled deeper into his coat as the two quickly hurried down the street to the cafe Havoc had mentioned.  
  


The cafe was warm and not very busy-- courtesy of the weather, Al supposed-- so they were seated and served very quickly. The two talked intermittedly, Al enjoying a nice pasta and Havoc eating a steak sandwich. The subject wavered, but eventually, Alphonse got to what he'd been wanting to ask for a while. He twirled some pasta strands around his fork tines as he spoke.  
 

“That facility, that you said you found Brother in,” he asked quietly, and something in Havoc's expression seemed to break, just a little. His mouth thinned out and something cloudy and dark passed over his face. “...I went to Lodsenburg, but there wasn't anything there. Was I close, at all?”  
 

“No,” Havoc replied. “And I'm not going to tell you exactly where it is. It's under investigation right now, and a lot of people will look the other way for the brother of the Fullmetal Alchemist, but not in the matter of national security. You can't go snooping-- and don't let me hear about you poking around the Drachman border either. We're trying to _avoid_ a war.”  
 

Alphonse clenched his jaw tightly, but didn't argue the point. In some ways, Havoc was right. The torture and sacrifice of a handful of people would not be equal to the sheer cost that a war would be on the country. The loss of life alone would outweigh what had been done to his brother. And Al knew that Edward would not want that, not in a thousand years.  
  


The lack of justice, however, made the bitter rage inside him _burn.  
_  

Al backed off the subject, and the two finished their meal, paid, and left. The wind felt like it was worse now, so the two jogged back down the street to the hospital, careful to avoid slipping on the ice that still rested in dark patches on the sidewalk. The receptionist at the front desk gave them both dark looks for letting the cold in and tapping the ice and slush off their boots at the door, but they both ignored her as they walked past the desk and back towards Edward's room.  
  


Everything seemed normal as they were walking down the hallway, but as they drew closer and closer, both Al and Havoc noticed that nurses and staff were looking back in the direction of Ed's room. Getting even closer, there were raised voices, and people were stopping and staring at the door, which was standing open with several nurses crowding it.  
 

Alphonse's heart plummeted at the sight.  
 

Not now, his brain screamed as he lunged forward, pushing his way through the mess of nurses. _Not now._ Ed had nodded. He'd gotten comfortable in his wheelchair. He'd been more receptive and responsive to the things around him. He and Mustang had just made _plans_ , they'd all been talking about going back to Central-- _not now, not now--  
  
_

Alphonse elbowed his way into the room, followed closely by Havoc. He stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of his brother, curled tightly in the very corner of his bed, blanket yanked around him. He was rocking back and forth in what was obviously sheer terror, letting out a soft keening noise. A bedside tray had been upset at some point, dumped all over the floor.  
 

Sitting on the edge of Ed's bed, holding up what looked like a photo, was an older man in his sixties-- though his lined face and grayed hair suggested enough stress to make Al second guess his age. His eyes were dark, and he was wearing a uniform and coat with enough color bars to cover a large section of his chest. Two nurses were crowding close to him and another was standing on Ed's side of the bed, presumably to catch his brother if he fell off while trying to escape his unknown visitor.  
 

“ _Oh shit_ ,” he heard Havoc murmur behind him. Al ignored him, stepping forward quickly to the man.  
 

“Excuse me, sir?” he demanded sharply, casting a quick glance at Edward. His brother had his face buried in his blanket, still rocking steadily back and forth. “You don't need to be in here, harassing my brother. Who are you? _What do you want?_ ”  
  


The stranger was very, very fortunate that he didn't appear bent on actually harming Edward. Alphonse was in enough of a mood that he wasn't sure how much mercy he would grace him with otherwise.  
 

“Please,” the man said, holding the photo closer to Edward. Ed curled tighter, if that was at all possible. “Please, do you know where he is? This is my son, Kendrick Minsk. He was in the same facility as you. He's still missing--”  
 

Some of the initial anger bled out of Al, blurring the edges of his temper into something softer and sadder.  
 

Oh. _Oh.  
_  

There were other people in as much pain as he was. It was a cold, sobering thought; the harsh reminder that there were whole families outside of himself that had suffered.  
 

“General Minsk?” Havoc asked cautiously. He stepped forward. “General Minsk, sir? He can't tell you where your son's at. Look at him. He can't talk to you. Not right now.”  
 

Minsk, as the man was called, looked from Havoc, to Al, and then back to Ed. Despair began to line his expression as he held the photo up again.  
 

“Please?” he said softly, “You have to know. You-- or any of the others-- one of you! _Someone_ has to have seen him.”  
 

Edward didn't answer, rocking back and forth in his corner. His messy blonde hair was hanging around the folds of the blanket that he was hiding his face in, completely obscuring his expression. He was trembling all over, and that was enough to steel Al's resolve. He felt bad for the man, but whether he meant to or not, he was terrorizing his brother.  
  


“Please,” he said firmly, stepping forward, “please. He can't talk to you like this. I'd like you to leave.”  
 

The older man looked at him, mouth wobbling and his eyes filled with grief and broken hope and everything Alphonse had been feeling for the last year and a half. It had ended for Al, culminating in his brother that sat huddled in the corner of the bed. Minsk still had no closure, nothing to hang on to while still being battered around in a sea of unknowns.  
 

And he was watching everyone else-- all the other victims, dead or alive, and their families-- as they disappeared in the distance, the light of a ship passing him by.  
 

“General?” Havoc tried again, cautiously. “I'll walk you outside, sir.”  
 

There was silence, apart from the shuffle-shift of Ed moving on the bed and his soft, panting cries. Finally, Minsk looked down and nodded, so obviously beaten that Al's heart twisted a little in his chest. He stood firm, however.  
 

“I--” Minsk swallowed thickly. “--Of course. I understand. I'm sorry.”  
 

He began to stand, pushing himself off the bed. As his arms swung forward, Al reached out and caught the photo, slipping it easily from his fingers. Minsk looked at him, mouth open and eyes wide.  
 

“Do you have other photos of your son?” Al asked, holding the photograph close to himself. Minsk nodded an affirmative. “...I'll show Brother this, when he's doing a little better. When he can handle it.”  
 

Minsk hesitated again, then nodded once more. After several moments, he straightened, making a passable attempt at looking every inch the general that he was. His uniform was crooked though, his hair ruffled from being slicked back. The deep shadows under his eyes made his face thin and haggard.  
 

“Forgive me for this intrusion,” he finally said, his voice unshaking even as the corners of his mouth trembled. He looked over at Ed for a long, long few seconds, then pulled his gaze to Alphonse and nodded, then stiffly walked out of the room. Havoc squeezed Al's arm and followed after Minsk.   
  


The moment they were out, along with most of the hospital staff, clambered up into the hospital bed, ignoring the smear of mud his boot left on the sheets.  
 

Edward flinched away from him as the mattress dipped. Alphonse hesitated, then reached out and touched Ed's bared shoulder. His brother let out a louder cry and Al pulled his hand back as Ed curled back into the corner away from him. All the earlier calm and relaxation was gone, replaced by terror.  
  


Al hesitated again, then pressed his hand to Ed's side, where the blanket covered him. He whimpered softly but did not react as strongly as he had to the first touch.  
 

So. No skin-on-skin contact, it seemed. Alphonse picked at the blanket carefully, then pulled it up so that it covered Ed's shoulders and wrapped tightly around him. A large fold was pulled on top of Ed's head, making sure that it covered his head without blocking his face and ability to breathe. After some consideration, Al squeezed up behind his brother, and then gently wrapped his arms around Ed.  
 

There was a hitched breath at first. Al adjusted his grip, squeezing Ed's casted arm to his chest. He pinioned Ed close to him, his legs framing either side of him. Ed was crying, but he wasn't struggling, and he very quickly went limp in Al's grip.  
 

 _Like a straitjacket_ , Al considered as he shifted in place, holding Ed as comfortably and gently as possible. The constriction and lack of mobility seemed to help, because Ed sagged in his grip, releasing hacking sobs that made his whole frame shudder. Al began to rock him gently back and forth, murmuring soothing nonsense words, until finally the cries petered out. Ed's head rested against his shoulder and he'd twisted himself sideways in Al's grip, eyes half-lidded and staring at the wall blankly. He hadn't been asleep long, Al noted tiredly, as Ed's eyes slowly slid shut.  
 

Eventually, little by little, Edward fell back to sleep in Al's arms. Taking advantage of the calm of sleep, Al brushed Ed's hair out of his face, carefully turning them both sideways to lay on the bed. He nodded at the last remaining nurse, who flipped the lights back off and left the room with a soft _snick_ of the door lock.  
 

Al felt the photo crinkle in his hand and he held it up to look at it. A young man in uniform stood there, with his back to North City Command. Messy brown hair and dark eyes like his father looked back at him. Carefully, Al set the photo face down on the bedside table.  
 

Alphonse laid back on the bed, eyes slowly drifting to the window. The sun peered through the gray clouds outside, leaving white stripes of light across the dimmed room. One long slant of light rested across Edward's face, but his brother didn't seem bothered by it. His blonde lashes, gummy with tears, remained firmly pressed down to his sallow cheeks.  
 

Al let out a deep breath, tucked Ed's blanket closer around himself, and laid his head back against the pillow. Eventually, he too closed his eyes.  
 

* * *

  

Havoc really didn't want to be outside again. He definitely didn't want to be out in this direction, heading out to the crookedly parked military car. With no buildings around the lot, the wind cut into him deeper than it did on the front street.  
  


Regardless, he kept walking, keeping a step behind the general with the bent shoulders. It felt like he ought to say something, so Havoc cleared his throat.  
 

“I'm sorry sir, about your son,” he said quietly, “But General Mustang is still busy looking into it. You can't go scaring the life out of the victims like that. They've all been through hell.”  
 

“What the hell is Mustang actually _doing_?” Minsk snapped back at him, in an uncharacteristic show of anger. He stopped next to the sleek black car. “It isn't like I've heard from him-- or gotten any sort of update! He isn't even in North City anymore!”  
 

He heaved a hard, shallow breath.  
 

“This is _my son_! What do I tell Mary when I go home every night and she knows these people are here in the hospital and Kendrick isn't with them?”  
 

Havoc swallowed thickly. He wasn't good at this sort of thing.  
 

“General Mustang has taken the evidence to Central and is going through everything with a fine tooth comb, sir,” he said, keeping his voice as even as possible. “...There's a lot more resources there to be taken advantage. Investigations and Intelligence are both working a joint effort on the case. They'll figure out what happened to your son.”  
 

Minsk turned back to his car without another word, pulling his keys from his pocket. He dropped them onto the icy car lot and he swore, bending to pick them up again. His hands shook as he sifted out the car key and fumbled it into the lock.  
 

Havoc slanted him a narrow look. He hadn't smelled alcohol, but not being obviously drunk didn't mean he hadn't had a drink or two more than he needed.  
 

“Sir, do you need me to drive you home?”  
 

“ _I'm not drunk_ ,” Minsk insisted angrily-- which, without prompting, told Havoc what he needed to know. Minsk got into his car without another word and slammed the door. The car engine roared to life a moment later, but it didn't pull away immediately. After a moment, the tinted window rolled down and Havoc stepped up to it. Inside, Havoc could see that Minsk had waited for the safety of his car before allowing tears-- whether they were of grief, or anger, or frustration, or all of the above-- to bead up in the corners of his eyes. Havoc didn't mention them.  
 

“Tell the boy-- Lieutenant Colonel Elric's brother? Tell him 'I'm sorry',” he said flatly, looking towards the passenger window. “...I didn't mean to terrorize Elric like that. I didn't realize-- I didn't know.”  
 

“Of course, General,” Havoc said, flipping him a casual salute. “...I'll let him know.”  
 

The window rolled back up. A few seconds later, the car drove away. If it seemed to be going a bit slower than usual, taking turns with more care than strictly necessary, Havoc didn't say anything out loud.  
 

Instead, he sighed, then pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it up. The smoke curled around him for a brief second before the wind blew it into nothingness.

 

* * *

 

  
Roy stood in his office, carefully sipping from the styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. Riza had finally deemed him worthy of being allowed back into his own office. He didn't feel quite as dragged down as he'd felt first coming off the train from North City, and he'd taken Alphonse's advice and took extra care on his personal appearance and uniform.  
 

With less shadows under his eyes, no stubble, and his pins being put on in the right order and cuffs straight had given Riza no reason to bar him from the office. The look she'd given him had let him know she was in no way fooled, but he'd swanned in all the same, ready to get back into the case and his responsibilities.  
 

Now though, he was facing a new conundrum. Several boxes of movie reels had been discovered amongst the boxes and boxes of evidence, and now they were stacked on his desk for inspection.  
 

“We could do a property acquisition,” Breda suggested, still munching on his croissant from the canteen. “Get a movie camera from the theatre, set it up in one of the old interrogation cells and watch.”  
 

“I think _watching_ them is what the big problem is,” Fuery said anxiously, “...On top of everything, they had to _film_ what they were doing?”  
 

“They're not labeled like most of the files and recordings,” Falman pointed out cautiously. The dark shadows under his own eyes revealed his own lack of sleep. Roy supposed it was only a matter of time before Riza was on his case as well. “It might not be anything.”  
 

“But it's probably _something_ ,” Breda replied, “Surgeries? Torture? Both? We won't know until we watch.”  
 

Roy hummed his response, making sure to sound as noncommittal as possible. Inside, his stomach had clenched at the thought of watching Ed forced to undergo surgery. Of knowing he lay awake and aware under the knife.  
 

The door opened and Riza walked in. Breda shoved the rest of the croissant in his mouth and Falman turned away, obviously hoping to avoid her attention. Riza didn't seem to notice either of them, walking straight up to Roy. She was on a mission, Roy realized quickly, judging by her furrowed brow and quick, deliberate steps.  
 

She got up to Roy and held up what she'd had tucked underneath her arm. Roy had thought it was paperwork at first, but as she unfolded it and held it up in front of her face, he could see that it was a newspaper. That morning's newspaper, in fact. The front picture, plastered across the front, was Edward. Specifically, Edward sitting in a wheelchair, wrapped head to toe in a blanket and staring up at what looked like a elephant ear plant. His expression was blank as always but his eyes seemed transfixed by the plantlife. Around him, cut out for not being the focus of the photograph, were the lower bodies of Alphonse, Winry, and Paninya. Havoc's uniform edged into a small corner of the photo.  
 

above the photo was a headline, printed in solid black capital letters, sure to capture the attention of every wondering eye.  
  


'THE FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST HAS BEEN FOUND!'  
 

Roy finished his coffee in a single gulp.  
 

“Oh dear.”

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh Happy New Year and Merry belated Christmas xDD and if you don't celebrate I hope you are having a very good December! Thank you everyone for your super kind comments and messages (and FANART OMG) that I got on tumblr!  
> If you want to see my art, and other people's fanart for this fic on my tumblr, click [here](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au)  
> As always, read the tags and enjoy!

  
  
  
“Brother, wait--”

Edward slammed back against the back of the tub, gasping hard through his nose and curling in on himself in a desperate attempt to _escape_. Alphonse winced-- he hadn't realized the shower cord was pulled when he went to turn on the water. He should have just had the tub filled before Ed got in, but he'd wanted to minimize splashing and possible slipping as much as possible. It had seemed the better idea to get Ed in the tub and fill the water up with him in it.  
 

Al released the shower cord, and the water began pouring through the faucet instead.  
 

So much for making Edward's first actual bath a good experience.  
 

“--Brother, here--” Alphonse plugged the tub up, swirling some of the quickly warming water around so that it touched Ed's foot. Ed pushed himself back a bit further, but couldn't escape the flood of warm water as it rose up in the tub.  
 

“I'm sorry, Brother,” Al continued tiredly, hunting for a cup or something he could use to rinse Ed off. He located one, along with a washcloth and a bar of soap with a paper wrapping, adorned by the hospital logo, still around it. He tossed the wrapping and came back to the tub edge. “I didn't mean to spray you with the shower, Brother. It's going to be alright...”  
 

Edward stayed huddled in the back of the tub, unmoving. With a sigh, Alphonse removed his shoes and rolled up his trouser legs, sitting on the edge of the tub with one foot in. He patted the tub side with one hand, trying to be as inviting and patient as possible.

“Come over here,” he said quietly, “It's okay. We need to keep your cast out of the water, Brother, so why don't you come over?”  
 

Ed watched him warily, yellow eyes looking between him and the shower head. In spite of his obvious fear, he slowly inched out, little by little. His flesh toes, seared with scars here and there, curled tightly against the tub floor as he maneuvered across the bathmat into the safe spot that was between Al's leg and the wall of the tub. Alphonse used the dry washcloth to mop droplets of water off the cast, then helped his brother to settle it gently over the edge of the tub. Edward winced, shifting his shoulders in a way that indicated pain.  
 

It was nerve damage, Al knew, from what Dr. Franz had told him. Nerve damage and muscle degeneration from being held in a single position for so long. The pull of a straitjacket was extremely damaging over time, and however long Edward had been trapped inside of one had been long enough for him to continue _suffering_ long after his rescue. It was possible, with physical therapy, for it to stop aching so much, but Al knew that getting Ed physically moving in the way he needed would be hard until he was out of a cast and fed up so that his ribs couldn't be counted.  
 

Al dipped the cloth into the warm water, lathered up the soap bar, then carefully began to run the cloth over Ed's skin. Ed flinched away and cringed more than once for the first few minutes, but eventually began to relax back as steam rose up from the water and Al gently scrubbed the built up grime off of him. He'd had the occasional sponge bath and cleaning from the nurses, but it was hard getting him to settle for one, and even harder to get him to let the nurses touch him. So far, with a lot of work and persistence, he'd eventually let Al make contact with him, but only barely. Skin on skin still elicited a panicked reaction, so Alphonse made sure he kept the washrag between his hand and Ed's body at all times.  
 

Once Ed was thoroughly soaped up and scrubbed, Alphonse used the cup to gently rinse him down, scooping up water to wash over him. He stayed gentle and calm, cascading the water softly over his brother and keeping the splashing to a minimum. Finally, with the suds cleared away, Alphonse wrung out the washrag and carefully began to clean Ed's hair. He had been advised by Dr. Franz not to pour water over his head yet, for fear of it getting into his ears and causing an all new infection and misery for Edward.

Al wasn't sure how well Edward would take to having water poured over his head in any case, considering his reaction to the shower.  
 

Lock by unevenly shorn lock, Alphonse carefully ran the rag through Ed's hair, scratching deeply at places where grit had built up on his brother's scalp. Ed sat quietly, his knee pulled up to his scarred chest and his toes wiggling under the water. Alphonse smiled at the movement, letting his gaze slide over to Ed's automail port. Water gleamed over its metal surface as he shifted and moved his leg.  
 

Al would have to carefully dry and re-oil it. He'd never done that for his brother before-- Ed was usually fiercely defensive of his privacy when it came to his automail and doing maintenance on it. Al remembered sitting quietly in dorm and hotel rooms, listening to the scrub-squeak of cloth on metal as Edward cleaned and oiled his automail.

Well, first time for everything.  
 

Al finally finished Ed's hair and took a deep breath. Edward had slumped back a bit while Al had been cleaning his scalp, eyes half-closed and sleepy looking. His back was pressed against Al's thigh and his trousers were damp in spite of his attempts at keeping them dry. Ignoring this, Al eased his leg over the tub side and popped the plug on the tub. He waited for all the water to drain before grabbing the fluffy towel hanging nearby and pulling it around Ed's shoulders. Being as gentle as possible, Al began to help maneuver Edward out of the tub. Ed made a small noise of dissent and Al snorted-- it was a fight to get him in, and now he didn't want to get out. Thankfully, Edward didn't struggle too much, but being down an arm and leg meant he wasn't really providing a lot of help in getting out of the tub either.  
 

Eventually however, Alphonse had Edward seated on the closed lid of the toilet. With one towel wrapped tightly around him, Alphonse grabbed the second one hanging on the wall and began to dry Ed. He avoided tossing the towel over his head or covering his eyes, choosing instead to dry Ed's messy hair by sliding the towel through it instead of giving it a rough tousling.  
 

His brother's body completely dried off, Alphonse turned his attention to Ed's leg port. Gently, he mopped away all visible beads of moisture that he could find, inside and out. He was as careful as possible around the nerve receptors, the way Winry told him to be. Beside the toilet was the small oil can she had left for him, and he carefully applied oil to the places Winry had pointed out to him.  
 

Ed watched in silence, towel wrapped tightly around his shoulders. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were wary as he watched Al. On his chest, Al could see the Y incision scars, knotted white and raised on his skin. The number '31' gouged into Edward's shoulder was an angry mottled red.

Ed was starting to shiver, so Al finished up with the oiling and began to fetch the clothing he had bought for Ed. Boxers and a pair of trousers went on first with little trouble, followed by one sock and a boot. Al put their matches in the duffel bag he had resting against the wall behind him.  
 

Next was the shirt. Al hesitated, holding it out in front of him for a long moment. He'd picked a looser shirt, with buttons so that he wouldn't have to pull it over Ed's head, and a few sizes too big.

Al looked back at Ed. Ed watched him evenly.  
 

“Alright,” Al heaved a breath, quickly undoing the buttons and swinging the shirt around his brother's shoulders. He helped him move the towel out of the way, then went to maneuver Ed's casted arm into a sleeve.  
 

Ed stiffened up.  
 

Al froze.  
 

He hadn't been sure how his brother would react to having a long sleeve shirt put on him. He'd woken up in the short sleeve hospital gown so there hadn't been a lot he could do about it, but the prospect of forcing Ed's arms into sleeves again hadn't been a fun idea to entertain.

Al rested the shirt on Ed's shoulders.  
 

“It's alright, Brother,” he said soothingly, carefully picking up the cast and, with some difficulty, began to edge it into its sleeve. Ed's breath hitched a little, but Al wasn't sure if it was from physical discomfort, or if his brother was about to lash out in panic. As much as he hated how much pain Edward was in, he sort of hoped it was the latter of those two options.  
 

Physical anguish could be alleviated a lot faster than mental.  
 

“Easy,” Alphonse breathed, pulling the cast down the sleeve, grateful he'd thought to pick a larger size. The sleeve was bunching a bit around the cast as it was, and needed frequent adjustment. The other sleeve hung loose at his side, still empty. Winry's work on new automail was slow going without having Edward actually there to measure and model it. With Edward's body in the condition it was in also meant automail was a distant goal for the moment, so the project was also not a priority speed job for Winry like it had been in the past.  
 

Ed's curled fingers appeared out of the cuff, and Al breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of a panic attack. Carefully, he adjusted the shirt so it wasn't bunched at the elbow, and did up the buttons. The mottled Y scar disappeared, safe from prying eyes under a thin layer of cotton.  
 

Al glanced at Ed's fingers again. They no longer looked as red and swollen as they had when he had first arrived at the hospital. He hadn't moved them much though, keeping them curled most of the time.  
 

Al finished the buttons and turned around to pick up the jacket he had purchased. It was a dark red peacoat, and was also somewhat large for his brother. This one was a little more fuss to get on, but Edward remained somewhat limp and quiet through the process, up until Al picked up the scarf and went to put it around Ed's neck.  
 

Ed slammed back against the toilet tank, the porcelain rattling threateningly in the bathroom. He made a small gasping sound, wrenching away from the scarf as Al tried to loop it over his head. The gasp was followed with a small keening whine, and Al was unable to help but look at the whitened scars around his brother's throat. They wound all the way around his neck, outlining a pale band of skin almost perfectly.

Al remembered the quiet explanation that Roy had given him in the hospital room, the broken, glass-edged details of how they had found Edward. The straitjacket, the surgeries, the torture. _The collar.  
_  

“Alright,” Alphonse folded the scarf up and stuffed it into the duffel bag next to Edward's other shoe. “We'll just make sure your jacket stays buttoned up and get you your blanket, okay? You don't have to wear the scarf if you don't want to.”  
 

Ed looked back at him with wide yellow eyes, like the idea of not being forced to do something was unfathomable to him. Al swallowed thickly and looked away.  
 

He hung up the towel again after making sure to mop all the water from the floor, putting away all of Ed's things and his oilcan into the duffel bag. Zipping it up, he slung the bag onto his shoulder and, with the limited space available in the bathroom, re-opened the wheelchair and began to maneuver Edward over into it. His brother's boot clacked loudly on the tiles twice before it found the footrest on the chair. Al helped him squirm and shift until he was comfortable, then, pressing himself up against the wall to get around the wheelchair, opened the bathroom door. The cool air of the hospital rushed into the bathroom and Al heard Ed shudder as he wheeled him out backwards into the hallway.  
 

Nurses walked around, staff puttered about as usual as Al wheeled Ed down the hall back to his room. Everything seemed normal on the outside, but Al could feel the nervous energy of the hospital workers brushing past him. Everyone's eyes were on Edward, who huddled tightly down into his chair. The loose arm of his coat hung loosely over the side of the chair, and Al had catch it and tuck it down beside Ed to keep it from flapping and hitting people on the way past.

Finally, they reached Ed's hospital room. A passing nurse opened the door for them and Al thanked him as he pushed Ed forward. Inside the room, Havoc was standing and talking with Dr. Franz. On the hospital bed were several packed bags. Al dumped Ed's duffel onto the bed next to them, then picked up the folded up quilt and, as promised, began to carefully tuck the blanket around Ed's shoulders.  
 

“I just don't know how we're going to make it to a car, even if you brought yours around to drive us to the train station,” Havoc said tiredly, running a hand over his face. The lines around his eyes were furrowed deep with stress and exhaustion. He hadn't been sleeping, Alphonse knew, not since the first news article of Edward's rescue had appeared in the morning paper two weeks prior.  
 

After that article, they'd caught multiple reporters and journalists sneaking in to the hospital in an attempt to get the first interview with the Fullmetal Alchemist since his disappearance.  
 

One such intrepid reporter had made it all the way to a sleeping Edward's bed one night. Al hadn't woken up until he'd heard the click of a camera and the immediate, bright flash flooding the room, and had surprised the reporter by popping up from behind Ed's bed and snatching the camera from his hands.

Al might have taken things too far by crushing the camera underfoot, because he had gotten a call from an exhausted sounding Mustang who had received a hefty bill for the camera. Regardless, it had been satisfying to break the camera.  
 

Since then, though, Havoc had taken up a near constant vigil outside, barely seeming to sleep. His goal now seemed to be guarding Edward instead of chaperoning Alphonse, and without his constant Havoc-shaped shadow, some things had gotten easier.  
 

“They'll just overtake us and drive to the train station to mob him,” Alphonse added in, going to the window. Outside the hospital doors were reporters, journalists, and camera men from every known newspaper and gossip rag in the country. Waiting, Al knew, to be the one news source with _anything_ about the Hero of the People. It was pouring rain outside and _freezing_ , and they still all huddled close to the building, their umbrellas like loose buttons from his vantage point.

Behind him, he heard Franz sigh deeply.

“You're going to miss your train if you don't go soon, and we can't keep him here anymore,” Dr. Franz said quietly, sounding regretful but firm. They had gotten the 'please find other accommodations' letter from hospital management the day before, and while Al was still incredibly sour about it, he had known it was coming. The reporters blocked people from doing their jobs, were a constant interruption to staff and patients, and overall a giant nuisance. The ink had hardly dried on the outpatient consent form when the letter had arrived.  
 

“We'll figure it out,” Alphonse finally said decisively. He let the blinds fall back against the window as he turned back to Dr. Franz and Havoc. “...Even if we have to beat them off with an umbre-- _what is that_?”  
 

Dr. Franz had been fitting a hat over Edward's head as he'd had his back turned. It was made of a mottled green yarn and had a multicolor pom on top. She had it pulled down firmly over his ears. Edward, for his part, hadn't panicked or lashed out, and was looking more grumpy about his hair being plastered to his face than anything. Al quickly helped him pull messy blonde strands out of his eyes.  
 

“My mother sent me the hat in the mail and asked me to ensure that _'the young man eats well; he looks too thin in the newspapers!'_ ” Dr. Franz explained, crossing her arms. “He needs a hat or something anyway to protect his ears from the rain and the cold, and it might be the least stressful option since he doesn't like anybody putting plugs or cotton balls in his ears.”

Al gave the hat, which clashed horrendously with the jacket he'd bought Ed, a look of utter dismay.  
 

Dr. Franz sniffed.  
 

“My mother is ninety years old, nearly blind, and knits mostly by muscle memory,” she said loftily, “And if my memory of his various reported exploits serves correctly, this is also the young man that wore leather pants and a bright red duster.”  
 

“...Fair enough,” Alphonse said after a moment. He gave the hat one last glance before turning to Havoc. In spite of the older man's obvious tiredness, he was grinning a bit at the look of annoyance on Ed's face. “...Before we charge out there and beat our way through the vultures, I'm going to call Winry and let her know we're leaving North City. She wanted regular updates on Ed.”  
 

“I'll be here,” Havoc said, reaching over and settling Ed's casted arm down so that he couldn't try and rub the hat off his head. “Don't be too long though. If Dr. Franz pulls her car around we won't have a lot of time before the reporters know who she's waiting for and they mob it.”  
 

“Got it,” Alphonse patted the arm of the wheelchair, waiting for Edward to look up towards him before speaking. Ed was making eye contact more and more often with him, though he had only occasionally done it with Havoc and yet to do so with any of the doctors and nurses that had come in to look at him. It was always a bit brief, and done with an expression of extreme wariness, like he was expecting a punishment for daring to look someone else in the face, but at least there was an attempt, and Ed wasn't spending his entire time staring at the floor or at the nearest wall.

“I'll be right back, Brother,” Alphonse promised, smiling a little as if to bolster both of them, “And then we'll be on our way to the train station.”  
 

Ed nodded, just a little, then slowly turned his gaze back down. Al looked back at Havoc and smiled, if a bit grimly, then turned and left the hospital room. Outside in the hall, everyone's eyes turned back towards him, but Al didn't acknowledge the openly staring hospital staff. He quickly power walked down to the phone alcove. Sitting down at the phone booth, Al spun the rotary, then turned in his seat so he could see if anybody—namely Havoc—was approaching from behind.

The phone rang once. Twice, then there was a clatter of bakelite when it rang the third time.

“ _Chimera Friends Pizza Delivery Service, this is your chimera friend Heinkel speaking. Pineapple pizzas, while disgusting, are on discount for all you strange pineapple lovers--”  
_  

“Stop dragging Darius,” Alphonse chuckled, “There's nothing wrong with a person who likes their fruit.”  
 

He leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, watching the hall as hospital workers walked back and forth outside the alcove.  
 

“How is Lodsenburg?”

“ _Same as before,”_ Heinkel replied, _“Quiet, and nothing interesting around. We're avoiding the hotel for now to avoid being recognized again.”  
_  

Al winced.  
 

“I know you hate camping,” he said idly, tapping his free hand on his knee. “Is it raining there as badly as it is here?”  
 

“ _Do you mean 'is it bucketing?' Because the answer is yes. It's pouring.”_

“...Sorry about that,” Alphonse replied, “...Have you been able to do any more looking around?”  
 

“ _Not yet, it's raining too much to consider running around. We'll wind up missing something or getting stuck in the mud this way,”_ Heinkel said, _“...We're probably not gonna waste a lot of time rooting around in the woods anyway. Any evidence left is gone after a year and a half. We're going to start mapping out those roads.”  
_  

“...If you drug and kidnap alchemists for a hobby, you're not going to want to live too far away from your hunting grounds,” Alphonse said quietly, “Those back roads lead somewhere. I'll snoop out where the other victims were taken from. Nobody is going to willingly tell me where the facility is at, so we'll just have to hunt it down ourselves.”  
 

“ _You sure you want to do this?”_ Heinkel asked, “ _You've got your brother back. I'm not saying we won't help, but you'll be poking your nose right up the ass end of the military's business, and that might not end well.”_

Al shifted, pulling his wallet out of his pocket. Inside, the picture of Kendrick Minsk looked up at him with his big smile and waving hand, bright and sunny and without a care in the world.  
 

“I got my brother back, but... other people didn't. They didn't get anything back at all, and if the official military investigation is going the way I suspect it is, there's not going to be any punishment for that,” Alphonse said firmly, “They'll let every torturer and murderer slip beyond the border to maintain peace, and they'll be free to come back and start this operation all over again. I'm going to _at least_ find out who they are. Their names, their faces. If I have to plaster their pictures on billboards all across the north, there's no way any of those bastards are going to walk in Amestris without being recognized for what they did.”

There was a pregnant pause.  
 

“...Alright,” Heinkel grunted, “We're gonna go now, before a train comes through and we're seen. Take care of yourself. And Ed?”

“I will,” Alphonse heaved a breath. “Thank you.”  
 

There was a click, then a dial tone. Alphonse breathed out deeply through his nose and hung the phone up. He sat in his chair for several long moments, eyes closed.  
 

He could still call them back. He could call the whole thing off, because the moment Mustang found out he was going behind his back, he was possibly ruining any kind of friendship or trust he had with the man.  
 

Al looked down at the photograph of Kendrick.  
 

“ _Please, do you know where he is? This is my son--”  
_  

Alphonse gritted his teeth, snapped his wallet closed and shoved it in his back pocket once again. After a moment, he climbed to his feet, scooted the chair back against the phone booth, and walked out of the phone booth. The quick jaunt back down the hall he tried to wipe the look of frustration and misgiving off his face. Havoc was tired, but he'd pick up on it in a hot second.  
 

Or, Alphonse paused as he opened the door to the hospital room, he wouldn't notice, because Havoc was busy _._ A soldier in uniform, wearing the dark blue overcoat and holding a dripping umbrella at his side, was standing in the room. Edward looked anxious at the presence of a new stranger in his room, and was huddling down into the thick quilt Al had wrapped over him. Dr. Franz had not left to get her car, and was standing close to Ed, looking between Havoc and the soldier with faintly narrowed eyes.

“What's going on?” Alphonse asked, walking up to stand on the other side of Ed. He looked at the soldier suspiciously. “Can we help you?”  
 

He hoped management hadn't actually called to have them all tossed out as quickly as possible. It was one thing to get a polite, if cold, letter. It was entirely another to get ousted by military police straight into the den of wolves.

“Alphonse Elric?” the soldier asked, and Al nodded, “Sergeant Fallow, sir. General Minsk sent a squad down to assist you and the Lieutenant Colonel in leaving the hospital, along with a car to take you to the train station.  
 

He gestured to the window with a gloved hand, and Alphonse stepped over to it and peeked between the blinds once more. What was once a disorganized rabble of reporters was now being directed by multiple soldiers, all holding them back in two lines from the hospital doors, leaving an aisle for them to pass through to the waiting black military car sitting in the U turn of the driveway.  
 

Al looked back at Fallow.

“General Minsk sent the car?” he asked curiously.  
 

“Yes, sir,” Fallow said, “He asked me to apologize directly to you, about the trouble from the other night. And that he's very sorry if his presence here is what drew attention to the Lieutenant Colonel.”  
 

Alphonse hesitated, then shook his head.  
 

“The timing's not right for that. The photo on the front page was taken before General Minsk was ever here,” he smiled at Fallow, albeit weakly, “So it's not his fault.”

Fallow nodded, then gestured to the bags sitting on the bed.  
 

“If you'd like to gather those, sir,” he said, as if handling every day brass. He nodded at Dr. Franz. “If you would push the wheelchair, Doctor. And Second Lieutenant, sir--”  
 

“Either side of the Lieutenant Colonel?” Havoc finished, referring to Edward in an oddly formal manner as he stepped to the opposite side of the wheelchair. Al squinted at him as he gathered their bags, slinging them onto his shoulders and hanging the duffel off his elbow. Havoc was watching Fallow as though he were definitely in charge, however, so Al didn't bring it up, choosing to fall in line as Dr. Franz patted the side of the wheelchair. She straightened Ed's hat again, and taking hold of the handles, backed Edward up and turned them out into the hallway.  
 

The odd group headed down the hall, brushing past and ignoring the rest of the hospital staff on the way by. Silence hushed through the hospital as they passed but it was largely ignored in favor of reaching their destination.  
 

Finally, they got to the hotel lobby. Another soldier, his overcoat slicked wet from the rain, stood at the door. Outside, the crowd of reporters suddenly seemed even more frightening, even as they were being held back from the doors and walkway. Al stared out at them anxiously, then looked back at Fallow.  
 

“We're going to walk straight to the car,” Fallow said, no hint of humor in his voice as he looked out at the crowd through the glass door. “Sergeant Barnes is going to walk ahead of us, The Second Lieutenant and I will be on either side of the wheelchair, the doctor will push the chair, and Mister Elric will bring up the rear. We will not stop for any reason, or speak to anybody in the crowd. If somebody manages to slip through, do not interact with them. One of the other men will deal with the issue. Is everybody clear?”

Alphonse found himself uttering 'yes sir' before he could stop himself, then supposed that General Minsk had sent the right person for the job. Sergeant Barnes, as he was called, reached over and opened the door. Al heard Dr. Franz take a deep breath as she began to push Ed through the doorway. They paused for just a second, under the hospital awning that rattled loudly under the force of the downpour, for just the amount of time it took Fallow to pop open his umbrella and hold it over Edward's head with a polite “Lieutenant Colonel”. This done, they closed ranks tightly around the wheelchair and took their first steps out into the line.  
 

Ed felt his breath hitch the moment the wheels of his chair hit the asphalt.  
 

No, no non _noonononono_ he didn't want to go out here it was too _much_ it was too _loud_ \--  
 

Rain battered the top of the umbrella over him. It blocked his view of the gray sky overhead, quelled that sickening dizziness before it could start, but the shouting on either side of him made Ed look back and forth wildly. He caught glimpses of people between the strange soldier on his left and Havoc on the right. He saw the glint of cameras and the broad backs of the soldiers holding them back.  
 

“Mister Elric, can you--”  
 

“Lieutenant Colonel, were--”  
 

“--a comment, Lieutenant Colo-  
 

Voices clamoring over each other and the thundering rain, all shouting at once for his attention. Ed looked back and forth, unable to figure out where to look first.  
 

There was a camera flash, nearly blinding Ed as it caught him underneath Havoc's elbow.  
 

 _\--there was another flash glare of light, the assistant moving the brilliant surgical light over his face for a split second and trailing it down Ed's midsection--  
_  

Edward inhaled, but his chest felt tight. His broken breaths stuttered to a halt, the puffs of frozen air that hung in front of his face disappearing. There was another camera flash--  
 

 _\--there was pressure on his stomach. They were sawing right through him, Edward knew. Cutting away his skin and peeling him open like a fruit. Eventually they'd just take him all to pieces and he'd be made to watch. He'd watch them crack open his rib cage and he'd watch as they lifted his heart from his chest and maybe finally, when they snipped away the arteries his world would finally go dark--  
_  

Cameras started flashing all over. Ed managed to hack out a noise, a broken plea that formed no discernible words even to his ears. He wanted to leave, he wanted to go back in the hospital and crawl back into his bed and not come out. He couldn't do this, he didn't want to do this-- Al had explained it to him multiple times that they were leaving but he hadn't understood just how awful it would be. Ed hadn't expected to break out into a cold sweat under his jacket, freezing him from the inside out and making him shiver so hard his teeth clacked together.  
 

Wheels bumped against the side of the car, there was an apology, muted voices that fell low under the clamor all around him. Ed tried to gasp in a breath but couldn't get his chest to work, even as the car door opened.  
 

Hands touched him. Edward recoiled, panic searing through him at the touch. Dr. Franz barely seemed to notice his panic, too busy hurriedly pulling him up with Havoc's help. Hands grabbed him underneath his arms, his foot skated across the ground, and he was suddenly pushed into the backseat of the car.  
 

The door slammed shut.  
 

The inside of the car was muffled silence, and Ed's heartbeat was loud in his ears as he sniffled uselessly for breath. The leather seats were cold, he was alone and it was all quiet minus the pounding of the rain on the car roof. His chest was tight, locked up from the effort of breathing--  
 

 _\--they were shoving the tube into him-- he couldn't breathe, he was drowning--  
_  

The trunk slammed shut, and the door behind him opened. Alphonse's slightly damp body pressed in behind Ed and he managed to make a high pitched, broken noise in response.  
 

The blanket that had fallen from his shoulders was unfolded and pulled around him. The weight of the quilted fabric and Al's arms pressing in on his chest was comforting in a strange way, and Ed found himself barreling back against Al's chest, letting out small half-pants as he struggled to keep the fuzzy threads of panic from dragging him back down into the darkness of terror.  
 

“It's alright, Brother,” Al whispered quietly, “It's over. I'm sorry. It's over. I know it was bad but it's over now. Just breathe, Brother. Come on, in through the mouth--”

   
The door in front of Ed opened. There was light for a split second before it was blotted out by Havoc's form. Outside, the clamor of the rain and the shouting filled the quiet car before Havoc climbed in and shut the door with a quick slam. The older man shook droplets of water out of his hair before looking back at the other two passengers beside him. Tired blue eyes crinkled a little with worry when he looked at Ed.  
 

“Hey, boss,” Havoc said, returning to the soft voice he'd been using when talking to him instead of the hard, flat sound of the rank he'd called him by a mere few minutes ago. He reached out. Ed's heart slammed against his ribs hard enough he thought they'd break, and he opened his mouth to say-- something? Stop him? Plead with him-- every touch felt like acid still, everything still made his stomach turn and his scars ache--  


“Easy, there, Boss.”  
 

Havoc's rough hands, complete with the occasional white mark and jagged, chipped nails, took hold of the edges of the blanket and tucked it in where Alphonse had missed covering him up, then carefully tugged the hat down over his head. Ed curled back into Al and closed his eyes, tucking his casted arm close to his chest as he fought to calm down. One of Al's hands reached up and pressed down on his head, almost petting him like one would a cat.  
 

The driver door opened, and Fallow climbed in quickly, followed by Sergeant Barnes on the passenger side. The two spoke briefly to Alphonse and Havoc, but Ed paid it little attention, focused internally on breathing, and dragging in one slow breath after another even as the car started up and began to pull away from the hospital. He opened his eyes a little as the clamor of the reporters and journalists faded away, staring at the leather seats and listening to the tires grinding on asphalt and ice as they rolled onto the streets of North City.  
 

Silence reigned in the car, marked by the occasional bump or rattle from potholes. Ed didn't look out the windows, curling up tightly against his younger brother's chest instead. His arms were strong and sure and promised safety, and gradually, with these thoughts in mind, the tension in his chest seemed to ease. The rush of his heartbeat faded from his ears, and Ed was left feeling tired and weak once again. Even his lips felt a little numb, and exhausted tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.  
 

Eventually, they hit another bump, then the car slowed. Ed felt Al slowly look out through the tinted windows.  
 

“No reporters?” Al asked. Ed felt his brother's voice rumble in his chest, even through the blanket.

 

“No sir,” Fallow said, opening his door and opening up the umbrella. The roar of the rain nearly blotted out his voice. “Our men are holding them off at the hospital. If we hurry, we can get you on the train before they break off and get here.”  
 

He climbed out of the car, followed closely by Barnes. The door on Havoc's side opened, and the man climbed out into the torrential downpour. Left in the quiet of the car, Al rocked Ed gently back and forth as the three men grabbed the bags and the wheelchair was fought out of the trunk. A few minutes later, the door beside Alphonse opened.  
 

When Al began to slide backwards, Edward began to tense again, and he let out a soft whine. Al squeezed him again reassuringly.  
 

“It's alright, Brother,” Al said close to his ear, “It's just a second. Just for a second.”  
 

Al scooted backwards out of the car. As promised, Edward was only left alone for a second before he too was slid backwards over the seats and, carefully protected from the rain by Fallow and his umbrella, set into his wheelchair. After ensuring he was settled, Al ducked back in and seized a packet of papers and a small box that Ed hadn't seen before.  
 

In spite of their best efforts the wheelchair handles were damp with rain and the seat cushions were dripping. Ed's boot slipped on the slick foot rest, but little mind was paid to this as they began pushing into the train station.  
 

Inside, the rain pounding on the glass roof was so loud that Ed couldn't hear anybody speaking around him. To replace the umbrella, Alphonse helped him tug the blanket over his head to block the view of the gray sky above them. Ed huddled down in his wheelchair as people passed by them, but none of them were like the reporters clamoring and shouting for his attention. Most of them just brushed by with hardly a second look at the uniformed soldiers.  
 

Al pulled the tickets out of his pocket, reminding himself as they passed by the caged in ticket booth to write Dr. Franz a very heartfelt thank you letter for getting the tickets for him. In front of the odd party, the train whistled loudly, a geyser of white smoke bursting from one of the engine stacks.  
 

Hearing this, the small party sped up, ignoring the rainwater that dripped from the wheelchair as they moved quickly across the platform. The collector at the stair took their tickets and stepped out of the way so that the wheelchair situation could be assessed.  
 

“I bought a sleeper roomette,” Al said finally, resting a hand on Ed's covered shoulder, “It'll be in the back so it's just going to be easier to carry him the rest of the way down.”  
 

“Right--” Havoc hesitated, then bent over Edward. Ed shrank back into his wheelchair, stomach knotting for a second as Havoc's strong arms wrapped around him-- keeping the blanket tucked carefully around him so that his view of his surroundings was still mostly obstructed. Before Ed could fight or struggle away, Havoc had him bridal style, the world around him turning in a kaleidoscope of storm greys and the bright red of the train. Ed's shoulders protested with a fire-like pain immediately to the jostling. His blanket hung open for just a moment before Al caught it and tucked it back in, then turned his attention back to collapsing the wheelchair. Ed heard Fallow speak, but it was too low, too distant and Havoc was making the step up into the train.  
 

Inside, the low ceiling and close walls of the train were an immediate comfort to Ed as they passed quickly through the carriage and to the next one. Ed turned his head, and could see Al just over Havoc's shoulder, pushing the folded in wheelchair down the aisle ways and holding the papers and box under his arm.  
 

“Sergeants Fallow and Barnes took our things to the baggage cart for us,” Alphonse said, speaking to Havoc, “Remind me to figure out General Minsk's office number so I can call and thank him. This could have been a much worse situation.”  
 

“Yeah,” Havoc replied, his voice loud when Ed was so close. Ed buried his face in the hollow of Havoc's neck, grimacing at the smell of his rain soaked uniform. The quilt was not faring any better, having picked up the rain that had collected on the wheelchair, and one corner had dragged a bit on the ground. Nevertheless, Ed stayed huddled tightly inside of it.  
 

They passed a row of doors in this car. Alphonse looked between the ticket in his hand and the numbers on the doors as they went by, stopping at “17” and opening the door. Inside, the sleeper roomette was small, with just enough room for bunk beds, an armchair, and a small desk to be cramped in together. The blinds were pulled down on the window next to the bed.  
 

“Alright Boss,” Havoc said in Ed's ear, heaving him through the door and, turning sideways to fit around the armchair, helped ease him down into the bed. Ed let himself fall back against the pillow, but lurched up when Havoc started to pull the damp blanket away from him. Ignoring the sharp pain in his shoulders and back, he yanked his casted arm over it, trying to hang on desperately to the comforting weight of the blanket.  


“Brother--” Al said, squeezing himself into the small room with the collapsed wheelchair. He tucked it up against the wall. “It's okay. There's blankets here, see--”  
 

He reached up into the corner cabinet and began pulling out several sheets and quilts provided by the rail company.  
 

“Here--” Alphonse said softly, holding up the blankets. “We'll trade, Brother, and I hang that one up to dry.”  
 

Ed looked out at the offered blanket, then slowly eased his grip on the one covering him. Havoc pulled it away gently, taking his damp coat as well to hang on the door hook. Al covered him up with the dry, clean blanket, making sure to tuck it in around his shoulders. A moment later, Ed felt his boot being untied and wiggled off his foot, followed closely by his sock. The blanket was tucked around his foot swiftly, before it got too cold.  
 

Al let out a sigh, sounding a bit relieved that Ed hadn't put up too much fuss. He reached down and turned the dial on the radiator on the wall, listening to the _pop-hiss_ as it came on. He hung the blanket on the hand rail above it, then flopped over in the armchair.  
 

Ed turned his eyes over to the blinds. Grey light filtered in through the slats, lighting the small roomette along with the weak yellow bulb above them.  
 

“Boss?” Havoc asked, stepping forward from where he leaned awkwardly by the bunk bed. He reached out and caught the cord for the blinds. “You wanna see out?”  
 

Ed didn't look away from the window, though his breath caught in his throat. He swallowed after several seconds of silence, then slowly nodded.  
 

It was okay. It was going to be okay. He wasn't going to be hit, there was nobody around with a cattle prod to electrocute him. Havoc wasn't going to seize him by the hair and slam him into the ground--  
 

“ _\--when you speak, you will speak with_ respect _. I want to hear a 'sir' every time you open your mouth--”  
_  

Ed sucked a hard breath in through his nose as the voice echoed through his mind, on a constant loop-- like a film reel with no end.  
 

The blinds rattled, jerking Ed out of his thoughts as he recoiled away from the window for a moment. Havoc only pulled the blinds up about six inches, providing the reclining Edward the perfect viewpoint to see out. The crowds of people in the station earlier were clearing-- they had all either boarded, or had left the platform to let the soon departing train clear out for the next one.  
 

As if on cue with his thoughts, the train shrieked out another whistle, more distant this time due to them being so far back from the engine. The was a lurch, and then Ed saw the crew retracting the stairs and pulling the doors shut.  
 

Another lurch, and the train ground forward, as ready as Edward was to leave the north behind it. Edward watched as the train station gave way to wet, grey and white landscapes. Houses, thinning out as they chugged faster and faster away from the city, were buried under the weight of ice and snow even weeks after the initial blizzard. The rain turned horizontal as they went, freezing as another layer of ice on top of the snow.  
 

Eventually, even the houses disappeared, leaving nothing but dark forests and rain dribbling down the window glass to look at. Ed found himself transfixed, however. Huddled and protected within the closed in roomette, it felt safe to look out at the world outside. Ed curled his leg in tightly, resting his head on the pillow as he stared out the window. He'd barely been awake for several hours and he felt exhausted already, all his energy having fizzled out under the strength of the pounding rain.  
 

Watching the stormy landscape go by, and rocked gently by the motion of the train, Edward let his eyes slide shut as he fell asleep.  
 

Alphonse watched from the provided armchair, quiet and still as Ed gradually drifted to sleep. He waited for about ten minutes after his brother's eyes closed before finally moving, looking at the packet that Dr. Franz had handed him last second before he'd gotten in the car with Ed. The top paper was curled and dappled from the rain. One splash of water had ruined the ink of the address into a barely legible mess.  
 

“What are those?” Havoc asked curiously. He stooped over Al's shoulder to read.  
 

“Brother's prescriptions,” Alphonse explained, flipping through the packet, “His pain medicine, antibiotics, some appetite stimulants, and so on. Dr. Franz outlined a basic dietary plan and recommended a nutritionist in Central City for Brother to see for more advice and a more detailed plan as necessary. She's got a lot of physical therapists listed too for when he's able to do it.”  
 

Havoc hummed under his breath. He was rolling an unlit cigarette around in his hand, and Alphonse briefly wondered how long it had been since he'd actually smoked. It certainly wasn't at any point today, not with the reporters circling like vultures outside.

  
“General Mustang mentioned a hospital?”  
 

“Yes,” Alphonse replied, laying the packet onto the desk and looking at the box he'd set between his feet. He pulled it into his lap and opened it carefully. “He said there was a POW therapist there that Brother might be able to see on an appointment basis. Hopefully they can even get him talking again.”  
 

Inside the box were a bunch of letters, many of them tied with knotted twine. Some of them looked as though they'd been battered about in the rain just as badly as they had been. Another had a footprint on it, like it had been dropped and then stepped on carelessly by the postman. They were all addressed to Edward Elric, strangely enough. Al tugged the twine off a pack of letters and picked out one of the straighter envelopes, tearing it open to read the letter contained inside.  
 

After a few minutes, he smiled.  
 

“What're those?” Havoc asked, squinting at the messy writing on the letter. “Looks like a kid wrote it.”  
 

“It's fan mail,” Al said, tilting his head as he continued to read the stilted writing. “I guess after the article hit the streets, people started sending the hospital letters.”  
 

He held up the paper and read the first few lines.  
 

_“Dear Fullmetal Alchemist,_

_I hope you are going to feel better. I always read about your adventures in the newspaper, and we like telling stories on the playground. I hope you feel better soon and that you'll be able to have more adventures...”_  


Al trailed off, then picked up the loose twine from the pack and found the slip of paper that had been tied beneath it.  
 

“Class 2B of Magnol Side Grade School, West City,” he read out loud. He sifted through the box, finding another note with Dr. Franz's handwriting, “ _There's more where that came from. The hospital had to put it all in a storage closet. I'll have it all mailed to your address.”_ Oh dear. I guess it got to be a class project?”  
 

Havoc's mouth curled up into a smile.  
 

“Cute,” he said, stretching and then yawning hard enough his jaw popped. “You gonna read them all?”  
 

“Not right now,” Alphonse said, tucking the letter back into its envelope and sitting it back in the box. “Maybe later I'll read them to Brother, when he's is in a better frame of mind. Or maybe when he can go through all of it himself. I think he'd like that more than a bunch of reporters swarming him like flies.”  
 

“Right,” Havoc said, leaning back against the wall again. His blonde hair hung limply, and the dark shadows under his eyes seemed to deepen under the yellow light. Alphonse closed the box and slipped it under his chair, then looked back at Havoc again.  
 

“If you want, you can lay down,” he suggested quietly, “You can take the top bunk. There's no reporters here. The door's locked and someone breaking it down is gonna wake all of us in here. If I need to, I can just crawl in with Brother.”  
 

Havoc hesitated, still fiddling with the cigarette between his fingers. It was obvious he was warring between a need for sleep and a need to go satisfy a nicotine addiction, presumably by hanging out on the end of the caboose. Eventually, exhaustion won out, and Havoc tucked his cigarette into his overcoat pocket. Hanging the damp overcoat on the back of the door, he climbed up the side of the bunk bed and clambered onto the squeaking mattress. Kicking his boots off and letting them fall to the floor with a dull _thud_ made Ed stir a little. Al and Havoc both froze as Ed made a noise of distress under his breath, but eventually stilled again.

   
“Sorry,” Havoc apologized quietly when Edward had settled again. Al waved it off and settled back in his seat.  
 

Eventually, Havoc's breathing evened out too, interspersed with the occasional snore. Al was amused to note that the other man was a bit too tall for the bunk, his knees slightly bent upward as he slept on his back. Edward stayed curled tightly on his side, unmoving except for the gentle rocking of the train. Grey light poured in through the cracked window to light up his pale, washed out face, his blonde lashes resting firmly against his cheeks. He looked somewhat less sallow than he had, thankfully, but still like he was deathly sick.  
 

Al sagged back in his seat and tugged off his boots and coat, setting them with Havoc's and Ed's.  
 

He hoped they could work through Ed's panicky fear of the outdoors sooner rather than later. It would be good for him, to be able to be outside of a hospital, outside of a small room. He didn't deserve to be holed up in a small room for the rest of his life just because someone had tortured him into the idea that it was all he was allowed, that his worth was so little he was comparable to an object on a shelf to be taken down and put away when pleased.  
 

With these thoughts in mind, Al let himself relax back into his chair for a little while, eyes closed as he listened to the rattle-grind of the train on the tracks and the heaving of the coupling-rods as they turned in time with the wheels. Overhead, the pullchain on the light clinked softly against the bulb. The blinds brushed against the window with a soft hush of thin plastic, and it was to these sounds that Al let all the tension slowly ease out of him.  
 

After a few hours, he checked the blanket he'd hung up over the radiator and found it dry and warm, so he pulled it down and, careful not to wake Ed, eased himself between his brother and the wall and swept the blanket over the both of them. Ed stirred again, but it was only to bury himself further into the heat of the blanket.  
 

Close enough now to add his brother's soft breathing to the myriad of noises around him, Al rested back against the mattress and let himself join the other occupants of the room in sleep.  
 

It didn't feel like he'd been out for long when Al woke up.  
 

The window was dark, the room was lit only by the old yellow light, and the train rattled on as ceaselessly as it had before he'd gone to sleep. He held himself, tense and tight in his spot next to the wall as he breathed out slowly. Anxiety slowly coiled tighter inside him even as he forced himself to physically relax.  
 

At first, he wasn't sure what had woken him up. A moment later though, and he heard it-- the soft, shuddering breath of a sob. Al looked over. Ed was curled just as tightly as he'd been when he'd gone to sleep, but now he was awake. His short blonde hair was plastered to him with sweat and tear tracks were already trailing down from the corners of his eyes. He hiccuped softly and curled even tighter, his casted arm tucked into his stomach.  
 

“Brother?” Al asked softly, sitting up slowly to avoid startling Edward. Ed sniffled as Al pushed the quilt off himself and leaned over him. “Brother? Are you in pain?”  
 

He knew Ed's shoulders and back were hurting; he knew his arm hurt, likely with a pain so deep that Al couldn't imagine it. Seeing the silent tears on Ed's face made Al _ache_ to his very core.  
 

Ed slowly shook his head a 'no'. That was-- that was new. His yellow eyes cracked open to look out bleakly at the room, jaw setting as though expecting punishment. Al did nothing, though, running a hand gently back and forth over the blanket as he considered this.  
 

“Was it a nightmare then?”  
 

Silence, then Ed slowly nodded this time. Al released a slow deep breath, then eased back so that he was laying on his side again. He stretched his arm out so that it was laying flat next to Ed.  
 

“Do you think you can roll over for me, Brother?” he asked after settling so he was comfortable. “Come on over here.”  
 

There was silence again, then soft shuffling. Ed slowly rotated in place, wincing as he moved until he was facing Al. Turning had put him a little closer, and had rolled him on top of Al's outstretched arm, and Al used this leverage to haul him closer to him, tucking the blanket tight around him in the process. Ed's tearful breath hitched at this sudden closeness, but a few seconds later he burrowed tightly down in his blankets, pressing up against Al's chest. Al, for his part, carefully skirted his hand up and down on top of the blankets, putting enough pressure that Ed could feel it through the layers of quilting.  
 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Al asked in a soft whisper, mindful of Havoc still lightly snoring in the bunk over their heads.  
 

There was a pause, then Edward shook his head a tiny 'no'. Al swallowed. He hadn't expected his brother to just come out and start talking, but it still hurt to know that Ed understood him so clearly but still felt too unsafe to speak, even just a little. Al swallowed this down though and went back to gently holding Ed instead.  


“Alright,” he said quietly, “...You don't have to if you don't want. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You're safe now, alright? So, you can go back to sleep if you want, and I'm going to be here when you wake up.”  
 

He heard Ed swallow. Ed stared at Al's chest, eyelids flickering as he looked back and forth anxiously, no doubt going over and over the nightmare he'd had in his brain. He was trembling softly under the thick blankets, his shoulders so tense that Al winced at the idea of the muscle pain he'd be in come the next day. Thankfully, Dr. Franz had given him a preliminary pain prescription that would last him a few days until he got to Central City and could get the main one filled. He'd have to get Ed to swallow it come morning, but for now, he laid quietly.  
 

Slowly, in spite of the fact that Edward was obviously afraid to go back to sleep, his brother's eyes slowly slid shut. His harsh breathing evened out. Alphonse took advantage of his mostly-asleep state and gently used a hand to clean away the dried tears off Ed's face, running the rough pad of his thumb over the curve of his cheek. His brother had always been warm before, but now with all of his weight starved away, his skin felt cool to the touch. Al pursed his lips and brushed Ed's hair from his face then rested back.  
 

Eventually, the rocking of the train was enough to put him back to sleep too.

* * *

 

 

Roy stood on the train station platform, keeping his coat carefully tucked around him as he watched the newest train come to a screeching halt in the middle of Central Train Station. He straightened up his scarf, tucked his hands in his pockets, then stepped down towards the back end of the train, where the sleeper cars were at.  
  


The initial flood of people disembarked and began to head towards the baggage car. Roy watched, slightly concerned he'd waited up on the wrong train when there was no sight of Alphonse, Edward, or Jean.  
 

Eventually though, Jean appeared in the doorway. He was carrying an obviously cranky Edward, who was wearing a rather _loud_ green knit hat. He was scowling, blonde hair sticking out from under the hat, and the red peacoat he was dressed in looked like somebody had forced it on to him, judging by the buttons done up all wrong and the wrinkled midsection.  
 

Jean stepped off the train, and Alphonse followed close behind, being helped by one of the train crew to get the wheelchair down. Roy immediately headed over to help as Alphonse struggled to get the folded wheelchair back open while balancing a box and a packet of papers in one hand.  
 

“Alphonse,” Roy greeted, taking the box and papers so Al had full use of his arms. “Lieutenant Havoc. It's good to see you again.”  
 

“General,” Al and Jean grunted at the same time. Ed just stared at his knee grumpily. Roy eyed all three of them. In spite of having shelled out the extra money for a sleeper car, it seemed that they were all tired and cranky, not just Edward. Edward, for his part, was frowning, but also seemed incredibly anxious, pulling and tugging at the thick quilt that was bundled around him and folded over Jean's arms.  
 

“Edward,” Roy said after a moment, as Al got the wheelchair cushions straightened out and Jean began to ease him down into it. “It's good to see you outside of the hospital.”  
  


Roy did not get a response, but Edward did flicker a glance in his direction before huddling down tightly into his chair. It wasn't nearly as cold in Central as it was in North City, but there was still a chill in the air, and frost on the great glass windows of the train station.  
 

“Brother's a bit grouchy today,” Alphonse said, a tad over brightly, as if to make up for his earlier sourness. “I think we're all just a bit tired of train travel, to be honest.”  
 

“Ah,” Roy chuckled, straightening up. “Well. Welcome home, then. Let's get your luggage so we can all settle in and rest. I know you'd all rather have a real bed to lay in after a train ride that long.”  
 

After getting Edward eventually settled into his wheelchair, they did just that. At the baggage cart, Jean took his own suitcase along with Al's, and Roy took the duffel with Ed's meager belongings in it. It was light in his hand, and Roy wondered, very briefly, how much Edward would appreciate having his own clothes and things back. They'd discovered a box of pocket watches among the evidence, and had redistributed them out to the victims that had not yet resigned from the military.  
 

Roy had kept Edward's watch in his desk, researching a way to make sure he could have it back. There was something too special about the battered silver and the cracked face of the watch, as well as the strange inscription he'd found inside the lid. There had been an event important enough that Edward had scratched it into the inside of his watch, and Roy didn't want the reminder lost to the State archives, or melted down for its silver.  
 

Outside the train station, his car sat by itself, undisturbed in the parking lot. Alphonse looked around nervously, then suspiciously, eyes narrowing. He seemed as though he wanted to crouch in to protect his older brother, and it took Roy a few moments to understand what he was hunting for.  
 

“There's no reporters,” he promised, smiling at the hard side eye Alphonse gave him. “I got a call from General Minsk complaining about the nuisance. There's a strong benefit to being a general and being in Central City with access to the Fuhrer's ear. He's instated a temporary order to keep reporters away from the victims, including the world famous Fullmetal Alchemist. It's only temporary and won't keep the underhanded ones away, but it's enough to ensure some peace from now.”  
 

Alphonse smiled at that, albeit tiredly.  
  


“General Minsk provided us with a car and some soldiers so we could leave the hospital without being mobbed,” he said quietly, “If there's anyway you can thank him for me...?”  
 

“I'll call him back and pass your thanks along,” Roy replied, popping the trunk of the car and helping Havoc to set the luggage in. “I'm sure he'll be glad to know you arrived safely. Captain Hawkeye and the rest of the staff also wanted to be here to see you come in, but they didn't want to overwhelm Edward with everyone at once. They'll probably all be by the house at some point this week to see you two, though.”  
 

Al smiled, and this time it went to his eyes.  
 

“I think we'd both like that.”  
 

The luggage tucked away, Al and Jean both struggled Ed out of his chair to get him in the car. Ed did not seem particularly compliant today, scowling and digging his single boot into the foot rest, seemingly becoming dead weight. He was clearly tired of train travel, and obviously tired of being manhandled from place to place by everyone.  
  


Roy couldn't help but smile though, even as he held the wheelchair steady as they wrestled Ed out of it. This was as close to Edward's usual stubborn, forceful personality that he'd seen since his rescue. It didn't seem like it to someone on the outside looking in, but Edward showing his grouchiness was already a far step ahead of him just curled in the corner of the bed, not reacting to anything or anybody around him.  
 

Eventually, they got Edward in the backseat, and Jean collapsed the wheelchair and put it in the trunk. Roy went over to the driver side and started to climb in.  
  


“Uh, _excuse you,_ ” Jean said incredulously, giving him a bemused look, “The captain's not here but she sure as hell wouldn't be letting you drive yourself.”  
 

“Jean, you look like you've been _run over._ You'll wind up wrapping us around a lamp post!” Roy said back, just as incredulous, “I'm perfectly capable of driving as necessary.”  
 

Jean made a noise of irritation, but Roy knew he was in the right. The taller man's blonde hair looked almost as gray as the sky, and the shadows under his eyes made his face seem hollowed out. Roy made a mental note to enforce Riza's most recent rule of “no being in the office until you look vaguely human” when Jean would inevitably try to come in to work the next day.  
 

And, Roy figured as he climbed into the driver seat and looked in his rear view mirror at Edward and Alphonse in the backseat, he was perfectly capable of driving carefully when the cargo was this important to him.  
  


A moment later and a cross Jean climbed into the passenger seat beside him, giving him a narrow look. Roy ignored it in favor of carefully pulling the car out of park and driving out of the lot, rolling out onto the city streets with ease. In spite of his verbal confidence, he kept his gaze carefully trained on the road. Attention span in the past had been his greatest failure while driving, but now? Marcoh had healed his eyes as best as possible but distant things were still blurry, often making him second guess himself, and it had gotten harder to focus on road signs that went by too quick to read. Roy relied entirely on his memory of Central City to correct his speed limit as necessary. It was twenty on 2nd Street, but dropped to fifteen on 3rd, and was only ten in the round about onto South Main, and so on, and so forth...  
 

Roy heard Jean snore not five minutes into the ride and, after trading an amused glance with Alphonse in the mirror, felt vindicated. Edward was laying back in his seat and staring out the window, yellow eyes half lidded. His casted arm was tucked close to his belly, like he was trying to protect himself. Roy glanced at him every chance he got, glad to see that he at least felt safe enough at least to start gradually going to sleep as well. Beside his brother, Alphonse watched out his own window as Central City went by.  
 

The car ride to Jean's apartment was quiet for the most part, aside from Jean's occasional snores. When Roy finally pulled into the parking lot and rolled the car to a stop, Jean woke with a grunt, looking around with bleary eyes. Behind them, Ed too raised his head from where it was leaning against the window. There was a red mark on his upper cheek from where it had been pressed into the glass.  
 

Jean stuck his unlit cigarette in his mouth.  
 

“I'll see you in the office tomorrow?” he asked. Roy looked at him, keeping his expression bland.  
 

“I suppose so, Lieutenant,” he said idly. Let Jean think he was going to step foot in the office looking the way he did. Roy would enjoy watching someone else get bounced right back out for once. “Get some rest.”  
 

Jean grunted again, then looked into the back seat. Ed, who had gone back to laying against the window, squinted back at him.  
 

“I'll see you around, Little Boss?” Jean said, “Maybe when we've all had a bit more sleep and not so grouchy?”  
 

To Roy's surprise, Edward watched Jean for several long moments, then slowly nodded. Jean nodded back firmly, patted the arm rest once, then climbed out of the car after saying goodbye to Alphonse.  
  


Roy fell back in his seat as he went around to get his suitcase out of the trunk. Al didn't seem too surprised about Ed actually communicating with someone, so it was clear to Roy that he had been doing it. He met Al's eyes in the mirror and the younger man smiled wearily at him. _Progress_.  
 

Jean went to the entrance of his apartment building, but stopped off to the side, leaned up against the building, and lit his cigarette. Roy held up a hand to wave goodbye and got a similar one in return, then carefully backed the car out of the lot and back onto the city streets. He'd ask Alphonse about the nod later,when Edward wasn't there. He might not be talking, but it was still rude and inconsiderate to talk over his head about him like he wasn't there.  
  


For several minutes, Roy debated bringing up the evidence, and everything they'd gone through and found thus far. Alphonse always operated better on more information, but second thoughts kept Roy from speaking up. Jean had said Alphonse had shown interest in knowing where the facility was, and they couldn't afford the international incident that would occur should Al work out who and where some of the torturers were, or worse, whichever State Alchemist it was that had turned traitor.  
 

No, better keep that tucked away for now, until the right time. Roy wanted to make sure everything was kept to code, so when he did eventually identify who was responsible, there were no questions that could be raised, and no accusations of bias.  
 

“So, how was the train ride?” Roy asked quietly, keeping his eyes trained on the road. He wasn't nearly as familiar with the ones he was about to take, and wanted to keep careful track. “I noticed you got a sleeper car.”  
 

Al looked up quickly.  
  


“You don't mind, do you?” he asked, “I know it's a larger expense than a normal train car...”  
 

“It was fine,” Roy replied easily, smirking a bit, “If the lot of you were grouchy after having a sleeper car to stay in, I'd hate to imagine how sour your moods would've have been after a normal passenger car ride.”  
 

“...Sorry,” Al said sheepishly, “I think we're all just... really tired. And tired of train food. And tired of not being in our own beds.”  
 

“Understandable,” Roy said, waving a hand in a 'water under the bridge' sort of movement before taking a hold of the steering wheel once more. “...May I ask what that packet of papers was that I put in the trunk?”  
 

“Brother's prescriptions,” Al sighed, closing his eyes. “And the new diet plan to help him gain weight. And doctors and specialists that Dr. Franz has recommended. You're his official guardian right now, so you'll have to be the one to sign for his prescriptions at the pharmacy. I can go to the store and get the foods listed on the diet plan, and you'll have to be the one to set him up with appointments.”  
 

“Of course,” Roy said. “I'll go over and learn about his diet as well, and his medications. That way we both know everything he needs. I also brought back information and pamphlets from the therapist and the hospital I was discussing with you, if you'd like to go over it before coming to any decisions.”  
 

Alphonse opened his eyes again to look at Roy.  
  


“Thank you,” he said honestly. “I'd like that.”  
 

He turned his head to look out the window, then squinted suspiciously.  
 

“...This isn't the way to your house,” he said slowly, tension bleeding into his voice and his shoulders. “General, where are we going?”  
 

“Ah,” Roy said after a moment, wincing. He tapped his fingers across the top of the steering wheel. He probably should have explained before bringing up the hospital. Alphonse was obviously still paranoid of the idea of his brother being dumped into a mental ward and locked away.”I rather thought that the townhouse wasn't going to be the best place for Edward to recover. It wasn't particularly spacious, nor was it wheelchair friendly, the neighbors are fairly nosy, and there's cars and pedestrians at all hours going by--”  
 

“ _General, where are we going?_ ”  
 

“-so I bought a house."  
 

Silence. Roy braved a look in the rear view mirror and Al was sitting up straight in his spot, staring at Roy with a nonplussed expression. Edward, meanwhile, was asleep against the window again.  
 

“You bought.. a house?” Al asked slowly, “...A whole house?”  
 

“A whole house,” Roy confirmed, “I spoke with a realtor a few weeks ago and found a decent house in the outer city limit area. It's a longer drive to Command, certainly, but it's also much more convenient for Edward-- and quite frankly, more private. It's fenced in and unlisted. There wasn't a wheelchair ramp when I first bought it but when you have a willing staff on hand, that gets solved fairly quickly. There's also an area grocery store, but we'll have to drive further in to get to the pharmacy.”  
 

“...You bought a house,” Alphonse repeated, “...I-- wasn't that _expensive_?”  
 

“I do have a general's salary,” Roy sniffed, “...I haven't really utilized to its full potential until now, of course. I suppose I was just very accustomed to my townhouse. It was very quaint and there was enough room for me.”  
 

He didn't say it out loud, that he'd been sitting and hanging on to his small townhouse, waiting for Edward. Hoping that if they didn't find him first, that he'd escape and know where he could go to for safety. Roy couldn't count the times he's come home from work and check where the spare key was hidden, to see if it was gone, or come around the corner of the living room and hope to find Edward crashed on the couch again, like he'd used to as a teenager, or maybe even in the kitchen raiding his refrigerator and complaining that the only things Roy had were leftover perogies and a box of baking soda, and Roy would inevitably call for enough take out to feed half the Amestrian army.  
 

“But now I have other responsibilities,” Roy finished instead, re-focusing on the street ahead of him. “And I think Edward deserves something roomy after what he's been through, don't you?”  
  


“...Yeah,” Al said, still very obviously blown away by the fact that Roy had gone out and _bought a house_. Roy tried to keep from smirking a little at Al's speechlessness.  
 

The drive to the outer edges of the city took about fifteen more minutes. Eventually though, Roy turned onto a smoothly paved driveway. There was a stone wall surrounding the property, and Alphonse could see the back yard had a high privacy fence around it. The veranda was nice and there were several garden plots in front of it, empty for the window but begging for some nice flowers. A freshly constructed wheelchair ramp extended from the porch down to the paved driveway, and after waking an increasingly grouchy Edward long enough to get into his wheelchair, Al pushed him up onto the veranda.  
 

Roy reached into his pocket and pulled out his keyring, then pulled two of the keys off and handed them over to Alphonse.  
 

“The house key,” he explained, unlocking the door with his own copy, “One for you, one for Edward.”  
 

Al looked at the keys in his hand for several long seconds, then carefully tucked them into his pocket. His returning smile seemed a little watery, but Roy opted not to mention it as he lead them both inside. He reached out and, with a held breath, flipped the switch.  
 

The lights came on.  
 

Roy let out his held breath slowly, making sure to hold himself confidently as he strode through the entry hall. He'd only just gone to the utility office to have them turn everything on that very morning, and hadn't been back to the house to check if it had gotten done. He'd had emergency candles on hand just in case but was much more happy to have electricity instead.  
 

“Oh,” Alphonse said in surprise, looking around as he wheeled Edward through the entry hall. Roy winced a little. They had utilities but...  
 

“A couple weeks was rather short notice to make a move and convert the house as needed,” he admitted, turning to look back at Alphonse, “...We got everything moved in, but I haven't had much time myself to... organize.”  
 

Roy stood in the middle of the spacious living room, surrounded by furniture still covered in sheets, and piles of boxes filled with belongings. He coughed awkwardly.  
 

“I've made sure the beds were set up in all the rooms,” he said, “Yours and Edward's rooms are down here on the ground floor so they're easily reachable. No carpeting, and we pulled out all the threshold rounds between the rooms and smoothed the transitions. All the doors were widened, and swing both ways as well. The back porch has a ramp too. All your things are still in boxes, but I've had plenty of shelving installed for the massive amount of books you two have accumulated over the years, so there's room for both of you to actually move around now.”  
 

“I--” Alphonse looked around, spotting the hall that lead down to the bedrooms before looking back at Roy. “This is-- I don't know how to thank you for this, General. This is so much more than I would have asked you to do--”  
 

Roy smiled a little and fluttered a hand, dismissing Al's thanks with a quick motion. Relief curled in him-- if Alphonse had disapproved, or found some fault in the house, he would have been up and about the rest of the day trying to fix it. That Al didn't seem to mind the total disarray their belongings were in was another anxiety relieved.  
  


“You don't have to thank me,” he said honestly, then indicated towards the hallway Al had just looked down before he could argue the point. “You and Edward are pretty tired from your trip, am I right? Why don't you have a look at your bedrooms and take it easy, and I'll order some takeout for us.”  
 

Roy paused, glancing at Edward. He seemed, for the most part, completely disinterested in his surroundings in favor of leaning back in his chair. His eyes were mostly closed and his features slack.  
 

“Should I go to the store instead?” he asked uncertainly, “I'm certain cheap Xingese takeout isn't going to be listed in his diet plan.”  
 

Al laughed softly, reaching down and patting his brother's blanket-wrapped shoulder. Ed barely stirred.  
 

“No, that's fine,” Al said. “Dr. Franz said not to be surprised if he spends most of his time either sleeping or eating for the first few weeks after we did the switch from the NG line to actual food. He's not going to have the energy for much else until he starts getting some weight back on him, especially with the pain medicine for his arm and his shoulders. So he'll probably sleep until tomorrow morning, barring any middle of the night wake-ups.”  
 

“Alright,” Roy replied, “I'll call us in some food if you'd like to get settled in a bit.”  
 

Roy looked at Ed. For a moment, he considered wishing him good night, but he was already mostly asleep, and he didn't want to accidentally wake him up too much for him to lay down again.  
 

“Thank you,” Alphonse said, carefully pulling Ed's wheelchair back and pointing it down the hall. “I'll do that. I'll have to go out later today to pick up Brother's food and medicine. Would you be alright with staying with him in case he wakes up while I'm gone?”  
 

“Certainly. I'll be in the kitchen while you're unpacking,” Roy indicated the stairs leading up to the second floor, “My room and the office is upstairs too. I'm afraid the team and I had neither the carpentry skills or the alchemy skills to make a ramp without an enormously steep incline.”  
 

“Oh,” Al said, smiling again as he pushed Edward's wheelchair down the hall, “That'll be fine.”  
 

In the hall, two doors exactly opposite each other turned out to be the bedrooms. A glance into one room and Alphonse found his belongings in their boxes, recognizing his blanket folded carefully over the bed. He pushed into the second room and smiled at the bed, where Edward's old blanket had been tossed carelessly onto the mattress.  
 

Completely unmade, just as Ed had left it a year and a half ago.  
 

“Alright, Brother,” Al sighed deeply, kneeling and pressing down the brakes on the wheelchair. Ed slowly lolled his head over to look at him. The barest hint of burnished gold peered out from underneath blonde lashes. Al began to unlace Ed's boot and took it and his sock off, then helped wrestle him out of the jacket. “Come on now--”  
 

He hauled Ed up from the wheelchair and, as gently as possible because a jolt of pain from Ed's shoulders was enough to send him wide awake again, maneuvered him onto the bed. Pulling off his trousers left Ed in just the button-up and his boxers, which, after a quick inspection, Al deemed clean enough to leave on him for sleep.  
  


Tucking Ed's removed clothes on top of the sheet-covered desk nearby, Al glanced at the quilt they'd brought with them from North City. Al squinted at it-- it was a plain old brown quilt, with no special qualities to it. The hospital logo wasn't embroidered on it anywhere either. Where had his brother gotten it from?  
 

Shaking his head, Al put the thought out of mind. It wasn't important really, but what _was_ important was getting the brown quilt into the wash. It was dirty all around the edges from being dragged on the ground around the wheelchair and occasionally stepped on. Carefully, trying not to let Ed wake up too much, Alphonse tugged the quilt away from him. Once he'd untangled the filthy blanket from Ed's thin leg, he pulled the other blanket up and over him, He made sure to tuck it in around his shoulders so that Ed wouldn't strain or have to pull too hard to tug the blanket over himself.  
 

This done, Al laid the brown quilt in the wheelchair, then carefully eased out of the room as Ed seemed to burrow under his blanket. The wide window that overlooked the back yard cast plenty of light in the room, so Al didn't bother to flip on the light, propping the door open so that he would be able to see Ed from his own.  
 

Stopping in the hallway, Alphonse cocked his head and listened. Roy was moving around in the kitchen, boots shuffling on tile as he spoke on the telephone. Al smiled and moved on, stepping into his own room. It was a little bigger than the one he had occupied at Roy's old townhouse, but infinitely more spacious with just his belongings inside it. Just as Roy had said, there were shelves for his boxes and boxes of books, and his desk now occupied the space by the window.  
 

Al noticed something bright sitting on the sheet-covered desk and went to go investigate.  
 

It took a moment before recognition set in-- college pamphlets. He'd gotten them in the mail before Edward had been kidnapped, and he'd been trying to decide which one to go to and what to apply for. He'd been so excited, so sure of everything. And Ed had sat aside and encouraged Al, knowing that he himself have to work for his bread after everything, knowing that the bank account sat empty and Al's medical bills were eating holes in his pockets.  
 

Al pursed his lips. He'd put the pamphlets away a long time ago, but it seemed Roy had found them. Sure enough, when he turned the one for Crown Central University over, there was a handwritten note scrawled in blank ink on the back of it.  
 

“ _This is still a possibility!”  
  
_

Al took that pamphlet with him over to the bed. He sat down first, then felt the exhaustion set in deep into his spine. They'd traveled for far too many hours for him to sit upright, so Al flopped back on the bed. He held up the pamphlet and, after an indecisive moment, he opened it for the first time in ages.  
 

Maybe it could be an option, Al considered, reading briefly through the University's self promotion to skim, once more, the lists of majors and studies he could follow. The pamphlet paper was cracked in wrinkled underneath his fingers, worn down from back when he was reading and re-reading it obsessively, trying to decide what he wanted to do with his life.  
 

Al closed the pamphlet and rested it on his chest, then rolled his head to look over at the sleeping Edward across the hall. It would be hard, in the beginning, to juggle his brother and school. If he waited though, until they could get to a point where Edward was more independent-- _if_ they could get him there-- maybe he'd be able to go to school, like he'd planned?  
 

Al closed his eyes. He would have to get scholarships. There was no other way to afford university for himself, but he was certain he could do it. Namedropping had its benefits too. An Elric would be a lauded student to land as a catch. And Al was certain Roy might put in a good word in someone's ear too if he was so inclined.  
 

Al never noticed when the burning behind his eyes ceased, and he fell asleep, half-reclined on his bed and thoughts of his brother and of school in his head. The hiss of the radiator in the corner and the occasional noise from whatever Roy was doing down the hall occasionally broke through the murky depths of sleep, but Al didn't wake up fully until his stomach growled fiercely, reminding him that nothing but train food did not a meal make. He glanced towards his window and was surprised to find that the gray midday sky had turned into a vaguely reddish orange sunset. Al heaved a deep breath and sat up to look across the hall. Ed was still asleep, more or less in the same curled up position he'd been in when he'd laid down.  
 

Getting to his feet, Al laid the pamphlet on the bed and carefully eased down the hall, keeping his footsteps light as he passed Ed's room. There was some shuffling going in the kitchen still, so Al moved across the living room, where the couch and a floor lamp was now uncovered and the fireplace was burning away, to the doorway of the kitchen.  
 

Roy was busy putting things away still, carefully hanging up pots and pans on the rack over the stove. Al was glad to see that part of the kitchen island was lower than the rest, a perfect table for someone in a wheelchair. Several boxes full of kitchen appliances and utensils were standing open, and so was nearly every drawer and cabinet door.  
 

The packet that Dr. Franz had given him sat open on the kitchen table, having obviously been rifled through. Beside it there was an unopened takeout box, and a clean pot sat on the stove top.  
 

Roy glanced over at him as he walked over with the box.

   
“The fork is in the box,” he advised, and Al took it out before coming over and dumping the noodles inside into the pot. He flipped on the gas burner and Roy slipped his glove from his pocket to light it for him. “I saw that you fell asleep but I wasn't sure if I should wake you, considering the amount of travel you just did.”  
 

“S'fine,” Al said blearily, staring into the pot of noodles. “...Y'know, if we're going to want Brother to eat properly, we're probably going to have to cut the takeout habit.”  
 

“Agreed,” Roy said warmly, hanging up the last pot and turning around to lean against the counter. He nodded over to the packet. “I went through the packet while you were asleep. I'm going to have to stock the house with quite a bit more than what's here.”  
 

Al resisted the urge to apologize, keeping his eyes trained on the noodles as he stirred them.  
 

“I'll go to the grocery store in the morning before Brother wakes up,” he said, wincing. He shouldn't have gone to sleep. He could've had that done today. “...I'll take that out of Brother's bank account. You've bought a whole house, so I'm sure that we can pay for our own food.”

   
“Whichever makes you comfortable,” Roy replied lightly, “And speaking of Edward's account, his first pension payment went through without any issues, so you don't have to worry about fussing over that.”

   
“General _Ungrateful_ have anything to say about it?” Al asked darkly, narrowing his eyes at the pot.  
 

“General Ungrateful is keeping his head down currently, as he should,” Roy said, “...Edward's diet mentions soups and broths. I have several cookbooks that should help you with picking up ingredients for good broths, if you'd like to have a look at them before you go to the store.”  
 

“You have cookbooks?”  
 

“And books on drink mixing, and etiquette,” Roy said idly, “You've met Madame Christmas. Anything that can be used as _entertainment_ , I know how to do.”  
 

“How would you use food as--” Al glanced up, saw Roy's eyes gleaming and groaned, “Don't tell me. I don't want to know. The cookbooks don't have pictures do they? I refuse to bring pornography into the grocery store with me.”  
 

“The cookbooks are wholesome and perfectly clean cookbooks,” Roy snorted. “I'll pull them out for you to look at.”  
 

“Maybe I can find some other meals too, for Brother to eat once he comes off the broth diet,” Al said, taking the noodles off the stove and dumping them, now mostly warm, back into the takeout box. He started eating quickly. “We'll have to measure his calorie intake pretty carefully in the beginning. He's off the NG line and out of risk for refeeding syndrome, but it doesn't mean he can't get sick from the food still.”  
  


“Refeeding?” Roy asked, frowning, “That sounds familiar.”  
  


“It's a process that happens when you feed a starvation victim too much, too soon,” Alphonse said, breaking it down carefully, “To put it very simply, the body sort of wakes up too soon and rapidly eats up the last of the body's fuel stores, and it can cause heart failure.”  
  


Roy tapped his fingers on the counter a few times.  
 

“I think I know what you're talking about,” he said after a couple of moments. “We found POWs in Ishval that had been held in a basement for a little over a month. Bradley had refused to go along with the terms of their release, so we thought they were dead by the time we found them. We gave them our food tins immediately but they got sick quickly after that. I'm not sure if any of them made it.”  
 

Al nodded, considering his next words. Whenever Roy ever talked about Ishval it was typically very clinical. He talked about events, statistics, and numbers. He very rarely described personal experiences.  
  


“What were the terms for their release?”  
 

“They would have been released without harm if we permitted safe passage of a group of women and children into the desert,” Roy said, his voice turning very, very flat. “Bradley refused on the grounds that they would smuggle terrorists out with the refugees.”  
 

Al decided not to ask what had happened to the refugees. He suspected that, unlike the prisoners, their fates were a little less uncertain to Roy. He finished his noodles and threw the box into the garbage can nearby and rinsed his pot and fork in the sink.  
 

“You said you had the information about the hospital you were talking about?” Al asked to change the subject, leaning against the opposite counter. Roy went over to a nearby box and pulled out his own packet of papers. This one wasn't nearly as thick as the one Al had gotten from Dr. Franz, but still contained a fair amount of information. Alphonse glanced at the therapist's business card stapled to the top of the stack.  
  


“Doctor Edith Carter?” Al asked, flipping the page over, “You said she has experience with prisoners of war?”  
 

“Yes,” Roy replied, going back to his spot and folding his arms, “She provides mental health evaluations and therapy for a lot of soldiers. Major Armstrong was the one to recommend her to me when I was doing research. He also mentioned that she was discreet and very trustworthy, and reporters hunting for information would not be a problem.”  
 

Al... felt immensely better about that. Major Armstrong, for all his oversized and blustering personality, would not willingly lead them wrong. He noted the number on the business card and memorized it, then looked at the hospital information.  
 

“When I talked to Dr. Carter, she mentioned that she would like to meet Edward here first, when he's settled in. He'll be more comfortable here than dragged out to an office. There might be several meetings before she can accurately decide on the best way forward for him,” Roy tipped his head. “I told her that his physical condition would make travel difficult for him and she seemed fairly inclined to home appointments for the time being, so there might not be a stay at their hospital. I did give her a brief description of where he was being held and she seemed sure that a hospital stay, no matter how much more pleasant, might not be good for Edward's frame of mind at the moment.”  
 

Al released a deep breath of relief. He had been willing to look at the hospital as a source of help for his brother, but had not really wanted to have to take Edward and leave him there. The thought of leaving his brother in a hospital like that sat like a heavy stone in Al's mind.  
 

Roy looked back in the direction of the bedrooms, where Edward was presumably still sleeping.  
  


“I noticed in the car... he nodded when Havoc spoke to him,” Roy said, pulling Al from his worried thoughts, “The last time I saw him he wouldn't even make eye contact with anybody.”  
 

“He's been reacting more and more,” Al said, “...It's... not a lot. But it's something. And maybe we can work off that. His grumpiness today is honestly one of the first times I've seen him show more than blankness and sheer terror.”  
 

“Has he spoken?”  
 

Al hesitated. He'd lied to Roy in the hospital, the last time he asked that. He'd been exhausted, mentally and physically, and dragged through the mud and had just wanted some small thing of his brother to hang on to, to keep to himself.  
  


But now though, Roy was looking at him earnestly, standing in a house he'd bought and altered specifically so Edward would be comfortable, wanting little more than to help.  
 

“Yeah,” Al admitted quietly, and Roy raised his brows, “It's.. not much. Not directly to anybody. He's said: _“No sir”_. Mostly under his breath, or in a panic attack, or in his sleep.”  
 

Roy's face became clouded over at his words. Something dark flickered in his eyes, like he was making a connection to something that Al couldn't see. Al watched him sharply, and it took Roy nearly a full minute to respond, as if he were determining what was and wasn't safe to tell him.  
 

“In some of the transcripts of the interrogations we've translated,” Roy said slowly, and Al tried not to visibly perk up at the mention of the evidence, “...It reads like Edward was made to refer to his torturer as 'sir'.”  
 

Al--  
 

– looked away. His stomach twisted inside him and he grit his teeth until he was sure he felt his jaw creaking. Ed had never even called Roy 'sir', in all the time he was his commanding officer.  
  


What did that torturer have to do to Ed, to ensure that the word was ingrained into him even now, when he was far away and safe from all of that?  
  


“...He probably won't respond too much at first, now that we're here,” Al managed to winch his jaws apart enough to speak jerkily. “New place, and all that. Hopefully when we get settled and he understands that he's not going to be moved again, he'll pick it back up. It won't hurt to keep talking to him in the meantime though.”  
 

Roy made an agreeing noise, then glanced towards the kitchen windows when Al accidentally let slip a yawn.  
 

“If you would like to get some more sleep so you can be awake at the same time as Edward in the morning, I can go to the store now before it closes and pick up what he needs for breakfast,” Roy offered, “That way you don't have to worry about being up hours early to get it.”  
 

“...You wouldn't mind?” Al asked. He'd slept for a few hours, but he still felt worn out, ground down to a smooth finish, and his fingers were slipping from the surface of wakefulness. “Thank you so much.”  
 

Roy waved a hand, picking the wet pot out of the drainer and drying it with a kitchen towel he'd found in one of the open boxes. This done, he hung it up on the rack with the rest of the pots.  
 

“I'll see you both come morning,” he said quietly, “Go ahead and get some rest.”  
 

Al wandered back to his bedroom after wishing Roy goodnight and collapsed again on his bed. Across the hall, Edward slept on, oblivious to all the discussion about him. Al watched him for a few minutes, watching as the blanket rose and fell in time with his breathing, then he kicked his shoes off and crawled underneath his own blankets.  
 

He would need to find a payphone soon and call Heinkel and Darius. Al felt a quick pang of guilt at this-- Roy was doing so much for him and Edward. He'd gone above and beyond anything Al had actually expected out of the man. It felt wrong, sneaking around behind his back to figure out where the facility was, conducting his own investigation to find out who was responsible for his brother's condition.  
  


Al swallowed his guilt down, setting his jaw again as he stared out across the hall. He wasn't going to be like Gracia, who had lost Maes and then had been left alone in the dark about the whys and whos, left behind to pick up all the pieces and try to keep herself and Elycia afloat. He refused to be written off on a 'need to know' basis.  
  


With these thoughts in mind, Alphonse tugged his wallet from his pocket, glancing very briefly at the photo of Kendrick Minsk inside, and then laid it on the bedside table. He settled down into the sheets and, watching Ed until his eyes closed, gradually slid back into sleep.

* * *

 

 

Ed was ten years old again, crouching on the ground, the straitjacket too big for him but tightened up all the same, until he was heaving for every breath. His arm and leg were gone again, the blood pooling on the floor of his mother's basement. The straitjacket shouldn't work with just one arm but it held him securely regardless. The monster he'd made of his mother's body sucked in one ragged breath after another, desperate to get air into malformed lungs.  
  


There was a hand, tight, gripping the back of his neck. The fingers were rough and harsh like steel bands as they dug in, as if trying to tear through the skin of his throat and bury themselves into his spine.  
 

“ _Would you like to go outside, Major Elric?”_ his interrogator asked, and the blackened, twisted body in front of him moved in time with the man's voice, the bones of her fingers splitting the skin and dragging across concrete. _“If this conversation goes well, I'll take you outside. You'll get to see the sky again._ ”  
 

“Don't leave,” whispered Al's voice from the wrecked body. Something from inside it's split open rib cage fell to the ground with a sickeningly wet squelching sound as it moved. “Brother, please stay.”  
 

Ed wanted to stay. He wanted to stay in the basement, with its familiar four walls and ceiling and nothing to hurt him in here except for himself, except for the familiar sawing sensation in his gut as more blood and tissue seemed to just drip from his straitjacket. His interrogator was pulling him up the stairs though, talking all the while about the sky outside and how nice it was this time of night, and “ _if you like, if you say the right things, you can count the stars outside tonight, Major Elric--_ ”  
  


The bed tilted.  
 

“Brother.”  
  


Ed woke with a gasp. There was a puddle of drool in front of his mouth from chewing on the pillow case, and tears were already trailing down his cheeks. He had broken out into a sweat under his shirt, muscles jittery and tense. Al was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. A yellow lamplight was on, but Ed's eyes were drawn to the curtain-less window instead.  
  


The sky outside was pitch black, and the stars winked innocently above them.  
  


Ed's breath quickened in a panic. Al looked back at the window, then walked away. Terror seared through Ed for a blinding moment-- don't leave, don't leave him he didn't want to be alone in this room with the window a yawning black hole in front of him--  
 

Al walked back in, holding a sheet and some tacks he'd scrounged from a box. The window was quickly covered up, and Al returned to where he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed.  
 

“It's alright,” he whispered softly, “Brother, it's going to be okay. Whatever happened in the dream isn't real anymore, alright? Remember what I said on the train? You're safe now, and I'm going to be right here for you.”  
  


Edward slowly nodded, feeling the rub of the pillow case against the dried tear tracks on his skin. Al reached under his head and quickly flipped the pillow to the cool side, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders once more. Al's hand swept some of his hair from his face, then gently thumbed the corners of his eyes, cleaning away the built up grit. His younger brother whispered soft words of comfort in his ear as he let his body slowly relax again.  
 

Eventually, Al's warm hand skirting its way down his back, Ed fell back to sleep.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long! ;_; Had a lot of personal stuff come up but here we are! Thank you everyone for your super kind comments and messages (and FANART) that I got on tumblr, and most especially, your patience with this slow jellybean!  
> If you want to see my art, and other people's fanart for this fic on my tumblr, click [here](http://ultracooljellybean.tumblr.com/tagged/solitary-au)  
> As always, read the tags and enjoy!

  
  


“ Brother--”  
  


Ed kicked out at him. He made a noise like a keening, terrified dog that Al had seen in an alleyway once. Al kept the medicine eyedropper safe in his hand, wrestling Ed's leg down and trying to pin the flailing, casted arm to the wood floor without smashing it. Ed twisted underneath him, and made another noise, trying to reach up and cover his ear.  
  


Al pulled his legs in tight, pinning Ed between his knees before his brother had a chance to get his hand over his head again. Arm bent in the cast and unable to un-bend it in order to slip it through the mess of limbs, Ed struggled and fought under Al's weight, face screwed up in a panic as Al tried to, comparatively gentle compared to the initial struggle, take Ed's earlobe between his fingers. Ed bucked underneath him, but Al made himself stay steady as he pushed the eyedropper into Ed's ear and gently emptied it of the medication, then began to pack in the cotton ball he'd held between his fingers through the whole fight.  
  


Ed whined softly, mouth open as he panted. A wet spot of condensation was gathering on the floor beneath his face.  
  


“ It's alright, Brother,” Al said soothingly once he'd gotten the cotton ball pushed into place where Ed's fingers wouldn't be able to pull it out. “It's alright. I know this sucked but it's going to make your ear better, alright?”  
  


He lifted himself up off of Ed, shifting his weight over and letting his older brother curl up tight on the floor. Standing in the doorway, Roy was hovering awkwardly, his face as expressionless but his dark eyes flickered with anxiety. His hands were up, as though prepared to jump on Ed and help Al but not sure if his assistance was going to be an actual help or just another hindrance.  
  


“ I'm sorry,” he said, the unsure lilt to his voice making Al smile tiredly. Al rubbed Ed's back reassuringly, reaching up to tug on the quilt laying on the couch. He couldn't see trying to get Ed up on the couch at this moment, so he swept the blanket tightly around Ed, then pulled down the pillow and slid it between the floor and his head. Ed made no move to fight him, still shaking like a leaf from the struggle and his eyes tightly closed. He was tensed, as though preparing for an onslaught of pain.  
  


Al thought about the earplugs, crusted over and covered in pus, that Dr. Franz had removed from Edward's ears. How long had they been in there like that? How often had Edward been rendered completely deaf before being put through another round of torture? Was that what he was expecting, every single time Al put the medicine and cotton in his ear?  
  


The thought of Ed expecting a blow or an attack from his own brother made Al's stomach curl inside him.  
  


“ It's alright,” Al said, in Roy's direction first, then back to Ed soothingly, “It's alright Brother. It's over. You're going to be alright. Do you want to lay here for now? I'm going to go get your medicine and your breakfast. Will you be alright laying here?”  
  


Ed didn't nod, nor acted like he could hear Al. Al decided not to press him and just tucked the quilt tightly around him.  
  


“ Alright,” he said, rubbing a flat palm up and down Ed's trembling spine. “I'm going to be right over here in the kitchen, alright? You'll be able to see me through the door if you need me.”  
  


Predictably, Ed did not answer, staring at the weave of his pillow instead. Al got up and, ushering Roy out of the doorway, went into the kitchen nearby. On the stove, bacon grease spat in the pan and the pot of broth for Edward was just beginning to bubble. Roy immediately went to the abandoned bacon to flip them and Al snatched up a pot holder and took the broth off the burner.  
  


On the kitchen table, still laden with boxes of kitchen utensils and glass, sat the bottles upon bottles of medicine for Ed. There were pain medications, antibiotics, an appetite stimulant, vitamins, and so on. Sitting beside the mess of bottles was a pill organizer, each plastic box marked with a day of the week. A calendar for medication. Al picked up the organizer and looked at it thoughtfully.  
  


“ The pharmacist offered it when I picked up his prescriptions this morning,” Roy said, glancing over at him from where he was flipping over the rashers of bacon again. The kitchen smelled really good, Al considered suddenly, his stomach growling. He hadn't had anything homemade in a while, just hospital cafeteria food, meals from the little cafe down the street, takeout, and train food. “I thought it might be a bit easier to try and keep everything together if it's all organized from the start. I got two of them for the twice a day medications.”  
  


“ Thanks,”Al said, smiling over at Roy as he sat down. He glanced out of the kitchen. Edward still huddled up on the floor, bundled tightly in the quilt. “...And thanks, for going to pick them up so early. I only had a little bit left of what Dr. Franz had given us for the trip back.”  
  


He popped the first lid of the organizer.  
  


“ Though, Brother would definitely accuse these of being yours,” he said as he opened the pill bottles, “...And I think a crack at your age would probably be made.”  
  


Roy huffed loudly, rolling his shoulders, and Al distinctly heard a muttered  _ “I am not old!”  _ under the older man's breath, though it was said with something like wistful fondness, a repeated phrase so familiar that it left his mouth without his even thinking about it. Alphonse chuckled, and turning back to his work, continued to carefully count out the pills according to the directions written on the slip of paper pasted to the side of the bottle. Each little box was filled up gradually, looking at first glance like a child's candy cereal. Al closed each with a careful  _ click  _ of the lid when he done, emptying out the first day into a small plastic cup. He gave it, and the pills inside, a considering look. A glimmer of an idea formed in his mind, and he took the cup up to the counter.  
  


Back in the living room, Edward lay perfectly still on the wooden floor, curled tightly underneath his blanket. His ear felt uncomfortable and full, and the cotton didn't help. He could vaguely hear Alphonse and Roy talking in the kitchen, their voices more like vibrations than actual sound. Al's laugh was low and gravelly through the cotton ball, and Roy's voice, already lower in pitch than Al's, was occasionally lost completely.  
  


But the fact remained, that nothing bad had happened. Not yet. Ed still waited for the kick after the fuss of getting the medicine in, still curled and braced as he prepared for the frustration to get the better of Al.  
  


_ That wasn't right, it wasn't right. Al wouldn't do that; you don't have to be afraid of your own brother. It was going to be okay now. Nothing's a dream anymore, this is real, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe--  
  
_

Ed shook his thoughts away when he felt the wooden floor boards beneath him creak. Nothing happened though, and nobody came into the room. Al had only leaned in to check on him for a moment before slipping back into the kitchen. There were voices again, and then nothing. Ed occasionally heard the sound of metal pots clanging onto burner coils, but couldn't hear the click of the gas being turned on and off.  
  


Once or twice he heard the unmistakable noise of pill bottles being rattled and moved around, and he wondered at what Al was doing.  
  


Ed looked over his shoulder slowly. He was all alone in the living room, and the pervading relief of being  _ left alone _ combined with a sharp strike of panic at being  _ all alone _ .  
  


He started to tremble-- he didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to be back in his cell with nothing to listen to, nothing to talk to, nothing to even think about, nothing but blinding white light and a maddening silence.  
  


Ed stared over his shoulder, eyes wide, trying to glimpse something, anything-- a quick flicker of someone passing by the door, the edge of a socked foot at the kitchen table. His eyes felt strained after just a few minutes of doing this though, and he was forced to look down as his head began to hurt. Frustration, bright and hot, welled inside him. It felt so fucking stupid, not being able to even look at things more than five feet away, not being able to hear what was happening ten feet away from him.  
  


Ed looked down at himself, where his one thin leg was and the empty space where he should have had a leg. It was so fucking stupid that he couldn't even  _ walk _ anywhere. The chains had been cut off and left abandoned but it was like they were still there, invisible to the eye but heavy all the same.  
  


Ed took a slow, deep breath. At least he had that.  
  


After a few more minutes of laying on the floor, listening for every scrap of sound he could, waiting, Ed closed his eyes. He opened them again, then slowly rolled off his side. He was careful to move his casted arm gently, not knocking it around or bumping it into the couch leg. He'd brought his elbow down into the floor during the earlier struggle and it was part of the reason Al had managed to get the medication in his ear without more a bigger fight. The dull, thudding pain had been enough to make him still, and Ed didn't really want to repeat the incident. With only one currently functioning limb to work with though, Ed had to maneuver his weight creatively to get himself onto his stomach. Crawling was out of the question, seeing as he had no desire to inchworm his way across the floor.  
  


Twisting his leg around, Ed managed, moving back and forth, to squirrel up onto his one knee. He rested his cast on the couch cushion, heaving another breath.  
  


If he could just--  
  


\--just  _ move _ . Just get into a better spot in the living room, where he could see the occupants of the room, to know with his own eyes that he wasn't alone, it would be enough. They didn't have to be on top of him, or touching him and making his skin crawl with every skin on skin contact, making Ed's mind white out with panic that a gentle grip would turn into something harsh and bruising, that he'd go from that soft, easy touch to something that tore and battered him until it felt like every bone would break and he would finally be left a twitching, bloodied mess on the floor--  
  


_ \--your own fault--  
  
_

Edward shivered, leaning against the couch. His fingers curled a little and he pulled his knee up to his chest.  
  


_ “--It's your own fault, you know. If you'd just behave, if you'd be good. Let's start this conversation over again, Major Elric--”  
  
_

The living room was all at once too small and too big. Ed wanted to be in Resembool again, with no walls and nothing but fields and fields of tall grass and no possible way to lock someone up, not really, and he wanted to be back in his cell again because this room was too big, and too empty and he couldn't keep all four walls in his vision at once and something--  _ someone _ \-- could appear just as he'd done a thousand times before--  
  


_ “Would you like to go outside, Major Elric?”  
  
_

That was the threat that had made Ed cry that day, the idea of the dark open sky opening up over his head when he wanted little more than to be shut back up in the safety of his cell.  
  


( _ fake false it wasn't safe not really, not for his brain and the mountains and mountains of random jumbled thoughts the stark blankness produced. It was the Gate all over again except he couldn't get away. Dying wasn't even an option-- he wasn't going to be allowed to, not with his eyes and ears and mouth and even his breathing being oh so carefully regulated--)  
  
_

Ed remembered reading the words on his medical equipment when he was bored, in his recovery room in the facility. Much was in Drachman but some was in Amestrian too. “For Official Use Only” had caught his attention more than once. His lungs were Drachman property and he was not licensed to use them as he saw fit, only his Drachman caretakers were qualified to determine how much air was good for him.  
  


It had been hard to laugh bitterly with a tube down his throat, Edward had found out. But now his mind was wondering again, back to the living room and back to the cell and back to--  
  


“ _ I hear the stars outside look quite nice tonight.”  
  
_

He had nightmare after nightmare of being outside, the yawning open space that held dangers untold. If a torture room could be five by five feet and produce the screams that Ed didn't let out during automail surgery, what kind of horrors were outside? Ed didn't want to go outside, he didn't want this living room, he didn't want to be alone like this but he didn't want to be  _ touched _ either and--  
  


Flat, blank paranoia buzzed through Ed's skull and he swallowed reflexively several times, staring at the weave of the couch cushions as he wrestled it back under control. He didn't want to try and get to the kitchen any more. It would put him too far out in the middle of the room, away from the safety of the couch and the boxes of stuff and the coffee table. This was like a an island in an ocean and if he couldn't have walls he would have this space.  
  


Footsteps again. The floor creaked, and then Ed head the sound of glass making a dull thunk on wood.  
  


“Brother?” Alphonse asked, stepping up close to Edward. “Do you want on the couch? Here--”  
  


Hands reached out and Edward couldn't help but flinch, pulling his leg in tight. Alphonse paused. His hands had stopped but Ed didn't dare look up, the weight of the panic and the slow curling self-disgust keeping his shoulders bowed.  
  


This was Al, this was his brother, Al wouldn't hurt him, wouldn't ever hurt him, not for all the money in the world--  
  


Ed wished he could get his thoughts under control. It felt like they were always racing now, like now that his brain and body had shed the sluggishness of drugs it couldn't wait to leap from thought to thought, with little coordination or a  _ process  _ that he could conceivably follow and--  
  


Hands again, but this time cloaked under the weight of the blanket. Ed released a deep breath, then scrabbled his leg underneath him as Al helped him. Awkwardly behind the blanket, Al managed to get one arm around Ed and helped him climb up on the couch. With the cushions to brace against, Ed pushed himself into the far arm of the couch and tried to bury himself into the corner.  
  


Al's hand accidentally brushed his leg. Ed's stomach flipped, then curled tightly, making him nauseous. The smell of the bacon grease wafting from the kitchen suddenly seemed heavy and thick, making it hard to breathe as Ed remembered hands on his body, pressure as a blade cut into him, fingers pulling his skin apart to look at what laid underneath--  
  


Glass pressed against his lips and Ed obediently opened his mouth and drank without thinking. The medicinal taste that coated his tongue immediately after swallowing the water almost passed unnoticed, but then Ed opened his eyes up to Al's apologetic face.  
  


“I know it tastes bad, but it's going to be good for you,” Al said gently, and Ed's stomach trembled as the paranoia shot back to the surface of his mind, insidious and dark. What had he swallowed, what had he-- “--It's just your medicine, Brother. When its easier, we'll see about getting them down in pi--”  
  


Ed threw up.  
  


Or, he tried. His stomach clenched and cramped painfully as he leaned over the couch, and drool ran out of his mouth more than the actual water he'd just swallowed.  
  


A quick hand on his back, the weight mostly blocked by the blanket.  
  


“Brother?” Al asked in an alarmed tone of voice, “It's okay, it's alright Brother, if you can't handle it--”  
  


He was dry heaving, but the water wasn't coming back up. Ed let out a miserable, keening whine. Al wouldn't give him anything that would hurt him, he wouldn't force pills down his throat that sent his world spiraling out of control and unable to struggle against the agony, he wouldn't, he wouldn't he wouldn't he  _ wouldn't _ \--

  
“It was antibiotics,” Alphonse was suddenly saying, close to his ear as he rubbed his back through the blanket. “For your kidneys and your bladder and your ear and to keep any other infection at bay. There was a pain relief for your arm and your shoulder and back and an appetite stimulant to help you eat, because I know you don't want to right now but you  _ have  _ to eat, Brother, and--”  
  


Al got up suddenly and left, then came back holding pill bottles in his arms. He knelt close to Ed again-- Ed tried not to flinch this time and barely succeeded, stomach still churning. Al read off the names of the medicines that he'd been given in the water, detailing every instruction, describing what they did and what part of his broken and wrecked body they were for. Ed listened, huddling back into the couch as Al went through them all. The urge to vomit slowly disappeared as he processed Al's words, snatching at the tidbits of information like a magpie diving for shiny objects in the dark.  
  


One by one, Alphonse set the pill bottles on the coffee table as he finished explaining them, until he was left with nothing in his arms. He rubbed Ed's shoulder, still covered with the blanket. Ed felt the raised brand, the number burned into his skin under Al's touch and tried to hold back the bone-deep shudder that wanted to crawl through him.  
  


“We've got some food for you in here,” Alphonse said, “Are you hungry at all?”  
  


Ed shook his head firmly. His stomach still felt weak and the idea of food at all made him feel worse, made the panic rise again. Food was a dangerous territory, it would be given via a tube shoved in his nose, or it would be given to him in a bowl on the floor, a meat mush that may or may not have any fun additives, or the spice of someone's piss and--  
  


\--thinking too hard on it made Ed feel sick again, so he curled defensively into the corner of the couch and shook his head again when he felt Al still hovering over him.  
  


“Alright,” Al said, straightening up. He gathered each of the pill bottles up one at a time, holding them in his arms like the most precious treasure. “...I'll check with you again in a little bit, alright? You can't go hungry, not in this condition.”  
  


Al left when Ed gave him a nod, and Ed relaxed into his blanket, pulling it tightly around him. Footsteps behind him made him look up as Roy entered the room, holding a plate in each hand. The smell of bacon and eggs got stronger and Ed buried his nose into the blanket, feeling his stomach turn still but not wanting to go through the useless, painful attempts at vomiting again.  
  


Oblivious, Roy and Al sat down at the coffee table close to him and, with Roy sitting on the couch close to Ed's curled legs and Alphonse resting on a cushion on the floor, the two began to eat. They talked idly about random things-- doing up the house, getting unpacked, so on, and so forth. To Ed's relief, they didn't talk about  _ him _ , at least not directly, like he wasn't even in the room. He'd had plenty of that, listening to doctors talking over his head whether they were helping him in North City or cutting him open on an operating table in the facility.  
  


Bright light filtered in his mind, with hospital masks and dark eyes looking down at him, and the dull pressure of a scalpel--  
  


Ed shuffled on the couch, foot touching Roy's thigh. He jerked it back like he'd been burned, but Roy didn't react except for the barest pause in the middle of his sentence. Words ebbed and flowed, conversation continued easily between Al and Roy, and Ed eventually managed to escape from the earlier panic, sliding out of it like oil from water. It didn't feel like the hospital, where he'd lay in nervous anticipation of the next touch, the next press of a needle while nurses talked in sharp, abrupt sentences that ended in harsh silences.  
  


Comfortable, and quieted down by the relative ease and calm of the room, Ed rested his chin on the arm of the couch, turning his gaze towards the window. The curtains still weren't hung yet and he could see the stone wall outside, with a tree still bare of branches just inside the yard. Ed watched as a large red cardinal flitted from the tree to the wall and back again, occasionally dipping from view as it fluttered to the ground. Focusing on the bird felt better than staring out into the open area of outside, and Ed let the rest of the world fall away from his peripheral as he watched.  
  


Eventually, the bird flew off, disappearing into the backdrop of trees over the wall, and Ed turned his attention back to the room. He wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been staring out the window-- Al and Roy were finished with their plates and were talking easily. Roy cradled a mug of coffee like his life depended on it and Al was sipping on a glass of orange juice.  
  


Roy was wearing his uniform, Ed noted after several minutes of watching them. His boots were on and shined, but his uniform top was missing, the white button-up slightly wrinkled and his sleeves pulled up. He was wearing a green apron too, and something inside Ed wanted to bubble up a laugh at the sight of the pot holder glove sticking out of it's side pocket.  
  


“ You're still going to work today?” Alphonse was asking, setting his glass down, “You're already running pretty late.”  
  


“I informed the Captain I would be coming in late, to make sure everything here was settled before I left,” Roy replied, “It's just an hour or so, but I wanted to make sure you'd have everything you needed for the day.”  
  


“Thank you,” Alphonse said, “We've got all the prescriptions filled. All I really need to do today is make all the doctor's appointments, and try to see how many of them I can get to make home appointments. And also talk to the therapist you've recommended.”  
  


“ Dr. Carter,” Roy said, leaning back on the couch and slinging his arms over the back. Ed shifted, turning and angling so it looked like he was still looking out the window. Making eye-contact was hit or miss with the reactions and he was more accustomed to the 'hit' part of that being taken literally. “She was very interested in taking this case when I talked to you, but very likely she'll put the first appointment out a bit until we're all settled in the house and she's not catching you and Edward mid-transition.”  
  


Roy's voice stopped, hitched, then he continued like he wasn't sure how Alphonse would take his next words.  
  


“She's interested in talking to both of us as well as Edward, if you'd like me to be honest,” he said, “...On a therapeutic level, not just in relation to Edward's progress.”  
  


Alphonse clinked his fork on his plate as he rearranged the carefully stacked silverware. He rotated his cup, sliding it around in its condensation ring on the table.  
  


Fiddling, Ed noted distantly. Al had done it when he was in the armor, particularly at dinner tables, when he had little else to do but sit there and hope nobody noticed he wasn't eating the plate of food in front of him. Old habits died hard, even without muscle memory to back them up.  
  


“ I'm not the one who was tortured and-- and  _ experimented _ on,” Al protested quietly, “...I'm not sure why she'd want to talk to me.”  
  


Roy slowly lifted one shoulder in a lopsided shrug.  
  


“...She implied it would be good for us both,” he said after a few minutes, “However much control we're keeping over ourselves, we're still affected by what's happened. Her words.”  
  


Al made a noncommittal sound in his throat, tapping the side of his glass with one finger to make the condensation run.  
  


“ We'll see,” he said vaguely. His eyes were dark as he spoke. Aster a few moments, he straightened up, gathering the dishes into his hands. He looked over at Ed and his voice turned bright again. The shadows behind his expression were still there though, just beneath the veneer of cheerfulness. “Brother, do you think you'd like to try eating something now? I'm sure the broth I made for you has cooled off enough to eat.”

  
Ed almost shook his head, then hesitated. He hadn't noticed, too focused on Al and Roy and the world around him, but he'd been steadily getting hungry now, when barely an hour ago the thought of food at all had made him nauseous and ill. Al was watching him keenly, as if trying to see the hunger cramps that pressed Ed's stomach into a tight, hard ball.  
  


“Some of the medicine was an appetite stimulant,” Al explained, and Ed remembered that pill bottle being shown to him-- made of rosy amber glass, one corner of the instructions coming free of its paste already. Apparently it was pretty effective. Hesitating, Ed nodded slowly, then went back to resting his chin on the arm of the couch. Beside him, Roy wrestled his apron off of him and passed it to Al with a murmured thanks, and Al disappeared back into the kitchen.  
  


Roy looked over at Ed, then laid his hand over his thin calf, keeping it carefully tucked on top of the blanket to avoid skin contact. Ed stared at his hand rather than look at the older man's face, a short, hostile debate raging through him if he should pull away or not.  
  


Eventually, he made himself relax. The weight was comforting more than frightening, and he was already hitting a plateau of energy. He'd want to sleep again soon, he knew. There was already a weight like lead resting on his shoulders and Ed could feel the strong ache behind his eyelids. A strong, bright coil of frustration welled up in side him, winding around the many aches and pains of his body and burning through the hunger cramps in his gut. He felt like he'd only just woken up, and he was already thinking about laying back down and sleeping. The smallest part of him, the part buried under the layers of paranoia and fear, wanted desperately to be able to jump up and move, to run around this house and throw himself into every box, look and touch everything and--  
  


Roy's hand shifted suddenly when there was a loud clanging of metal in the kitchen, and Ed flinched and pulled his leg away. Thankfully, Roy did not protest or reach for him to keep trying. He leaned up and looked towards the kitchen instead.  
  


“ Alphonse?” he called, “Is everything alright?”  
  


Al reappeared in the door a moment later, holding a bowl in his hands. He had put on Roy's apron and Ed could see a spoon sticking out of the pocket now instead of an oven mitt.  
  


“ I just dropped the pot,” Al explained as he walked over to the couch. Ed watched, curling in and focusing on the bowl. It smelled good, vaguely like chicken, and there was a little bit of steam curling above it still.  
  


Ed's stomach clenched in a hard reminder of his hunger. He looked at the bowl expectantly, waiting--  
  


_ \--it looked like meat, like hashed up meat that someone would feed a dog but Ed was starving, he hadn't eaten in what felt like a week and he'd already vomited up what little stomach acid was left inside him and he was willing to try anything that wasn't just chewing pathetically on the soft padding of his cell--  
  
_

Al sat the bowl on the table as he talked to Roy. Ed barely heard it, barely paid the words any mind as he looked at the bowl.  
  


It was almost on the ground-- that was permission to eat, wasn't it?  
  


They'd always put his bowl on the ground for him-- it wasn't until it touched the floor that Ed was allowed to eat it, but sometimes they'd picked it back up when he had managed to shuffle on his knees over to it, setting it back on the desk and forcing him to lay flat on the ground, face pressed to their boots and--  
  


“ _ \--You have fifteen seconds to eat. If you cannot appreciate a meal so good then I'll make sure you give it back--”  
  
_

Ed had tried. He really had but it had been nearly impossible to gag down the mush he had been served in that amount of time, and no amount of clenching his teeth had prevented him from throwing it back up when they had began to kick him in the stomach over and over, until he was certain his trapped arms would break and there were boot print shaped bruises all over his body.  
  


Al scooted the table up closer to the couch, still talking to Roy. The bowl was in easier reach now. Ed stared over at it, letting his leg lower so that his knee was on the cushion instead of pressed to his face. If he moved now-- if he went for it--  
  


Al reached down to the bowl, as if to move it— _ to take it-- _ and panic struck through Ed like a bolt, and he was moving before he could stop himself, before he could really  _ think _ about it. He didn't stop to think that Al wouldn't actually tease him with food, wouldn't deliberately withhold it from him, wouldn't actually starve his brother. Ed just shoved himself forward from the couch cushions, nearly face-planting on the ground and clocking his casted arm on the edge of the table. Pain thudded up to his shoulder and raced like fire down his back and distantly, Ed heard Al cry out in alarm the split second before he buried his face into the bowl.  
  


Al looked on in shock, body frozen, mouth open as Ed hurriedly slurped the broth down, on his one knee and sagging against the table for support as he drank like a dog from the bowl. The spoon in Al's apron pocket sat forgotten, a heavy weight against his leg. Ed's weight slipped, and the bowl slipped with him, turning on its side and rattling to the floor with a dull  _ thunk _ of porcelain on wood. Broth spilled out everywhere and Al's stomach dropped when Ed didn't seem to mind, licking it desperately off the floor like his life depended on it.  
  


Still sitting on the couch, Roy too had frozen, stiff as a board and his face like ash as he looked on at the scene in front of him. His dark eyes had fallen flat of any expression and his knuckles were white where his hands gripped the back of the couch.  
  


Al looked back at Ed.  
  


“Brother--” he hesitated then reached out to grab Ed and to pick up the bowl, “Brother, don't--”  
  


Ed became very still, very silent the moment Al had his hands near, and Al had a split second to remember that dog in the alleyway he had thought of earlier before Ed  _ lunged _ , and bruising, crushing pain shot through his finger when Ed bit down, a ferocity exacerbated by the sheer terror on his face. Al grabbed him with his other hand, not wanting to hit him, but desperately needing him to let  _ go--  
  
_

“Edward, stop!” Roy barked suddenly, loud and sharp and commanding, “Drop it!”  
  


\--and Edward let go, as fast as he had bit down, and then crouched low over the puddled broth. His eyes were down turned, his mouth moving in what looked like silent begging. His face and messy hair were sopping wet from being shoved in the bowl.  
  


Al looked down at his hand. The indents from Ed's teeth were there, and while it didn't look like it was bleeding, the edges of the bite marks were already turning a dark color. He looked up at Roy, who was staring down at Ed with a pinpoint focus, his mouth curled as if he were thinking of something distasteful, something he didn't like to think about.  
  


“Edward, leave it,” Roy said, getting to his feet. He stepped forward, boots heavy on the wood floor. He came to a stop right beside the crouching Edward, and Alphonse was struck with the ugly image of a man standing over a kicked dog. “...Leave it.”  
  


A shudder passed over Ed's body.  
  


“...Yes sir,” came a whisper, hoarse and broken under Ed's breath. He huddled up on himself, curling tightly as if to brace for the inevitable blow. The broth sat in a puddle around Ed's knee, rapidly cooling on the floor. He didn't reach for it again though his eyes did not leave the puddle.

  
Al watched Roy sharply as the man stood over Edward for several more seconds, ensuring that he wasn't going to start licking up the broth again, then stepped away to gather the blanket that had been partially dragged off the couch. Carefully, he re-draped it over Ed's shoulders. With slow, deliberate movements, he wrapped his arms around Ed and lifted him away from the broth on the ground, pulling him back up on the couch. Ed was stiff at first, body tense underneath the blanket, but after a few moments of being manhandled, Edward went limp and accepting of this treatment.  
  


Alphonse looked down at his hand again. Ed had definitely not broken skin, but the bite mark was rapidly bruising.  
  


“Alphonse,” Roy said quietly, and Al looked up once again at Roy. Roy had settled Ed into the couch again, moving his limbs around to make sure he was comfortable. Ed accepted this without fighting. His yellow eyes were distant, like he was seeing something around him that Al and Roy couldn't see.  
  


And maybe he was, Alphonse considered. The living room could easily be a torture room. Roy could be the interrogator now, and Al a nearby soldier, someone to stand by and watch the torment without a word. Without lifting a finger to help him.  
  


“ Al,” Roy repeated, slowly taking a seat beside Edward, “...Why don't you get another bowl? I'm sure Edward wouldn't mind trying again.”  
  


“ I--” Al hesitated, looking at his brother. Edward wasn't moving, wasn't reacting at all now. Roy started smoothing a hand over his back. “...Yeah. Alright.”  
  


Alphonse turned and walked back into the kitchen. The broth mix thankfully still sat next to the stove, and it was no problem to start up another pot. The time it took for it to heat up would probably be enough to get Edward calmed down again, Al realized after a moment. He quietly stood over the pot of water, staring into it as he waited for the bubbles to start forming.  
  


_ “Yes sir.”  
  
_

Ed's rough, low voice rang in his ears like the clearest bell. One one hand, Ed was speaking, and Roy's commandeering voice at least seemed to have had some effect over him that being soft and gentle had yet to accomplish.  
  


On the other hand, Ed was  _ speaking _ , and Al wasn't sure if he wanted to learn the actual extent of the damage in the things that Edward managed to say.  
  


“ _ Yes sir.”  
  
_

Al practically threw the broth mix in with the water. A bright, searing edge of anger shot through him, and he struggled to swallow back the bile in his throat. It felt like the stirring spoon was going to break in his hand as he mixed the broth up.  
  


How dare they do this to his brother.  _ How dare they _ bring him so low. The low bubbling of the pot felt like hissing in his ears, like a screaming, like how he was going to make  _ them _ feel, how he was going to make them feel every inch of the pain they had wrought on his brother, and--  
  


The broth was too hot. Al pulled it from the burner, clicking the gas off as he mechanically tidied the counter and pulled down a bowl. He waited, listening to the sound of the boiling as it slowed down, and to the sounds of Roy's low words coming from the living room. He wanted to know what the man was saying, but something venomous and angry still burned inside him, so he stayed with the pot and continued stirring, letting it simmer down into something edible, something that wouldn't scald or hurt Edward.  
  


Finally, Al tested the broth on his arm, swallowed back the bitter anger still in his throat, put the spoon in the bowl, and carried it back out into the living room.  
  


Edward was huddled up closer to Roy now, having at some point regained the will to move and shift back around. He was still curled in the blanket, and his eyes were now fixated on Roy's hands, which the man had clasped on his knees as he was leaning forward and talking to Edward in a low voice. Alphonse tightened his own grip on the bowl as he walked back over to them. He didn't set the bowl down this time, pushing the coffee table forward with one foot and sitting down.  
  


Moments ticked by in silence. Finally, Ed slowly turned his head to look over at Alphonse. His yellow eyes were wary, shadowed heavily by his messy blonde hair as he looked again at the bowl. Al carefully stirred the broth, watching Ed in case of a repeat of what had happened. Finally, he lifted the spoon and held it up to Ed.  
  


Ed didn't take it. The blank, animal expression on his face cracked and gave way to anxiety. Paranoia filtered in from whatever dark place he was hiding inside him. Al raised the spoon to his own mouth and ate it. It was light, with a faintly chicken taste. He lifted up another spoonful and held back up to Ed's face.  
  


Nothing. Edward kept his face turned away, eyes downcast. Al looked over at Roy and Roy looked back at him, dark eyes nearly unreadable. The question was there, though, written in the shadows building on his face.  
  


After a moment, Al nodded.  
  


Roy didn't move at first, was as still as a statue on the couch beside Ed. He could have been cut from marble. Eventually though, he did move. Slow, deliberate movements, his boots loud as they moved on the floor in front of the couch. Scarred hands reached around Ed and seized him tightly through the blanket, gripping his sides with an iron-like force. It was enough to make Ed stutter out a startled gasp, but before he could struggle, Roy spoke.  
  


His voice was sharp, as hard as the grip he was putting on Edward. His face turned harsh, his eyes focused on Ed.  
  


“ Edward,” he said, voice loud and cutting in the quiet living room. Edward flinched, but stopped struggling and leaned towards Roy despite the coldness of his voice. “This is your food. You're going to eat it like you're told.”  
  


Silence again. Al nearly put the cooling spoon in his own mouth again to get Ed a warmer serving. A second later though, and Edward was slowly opening his mouth. Anxiety filtered through his expression as he did, like he was terrified of being forcefed instead of just spoonfed, or perhaps like he was going to be intubated again--  
  


Al pressed the spoon into Ed's mouth. At first, his brother didn't react, didn't even close his mouth so Al thought he was just going to drool out the soup. Another moment later though, and Ed closed his mouth around the spoon, and with his throat working a few times, swallowed down the broth.  
  


“ Good,” Roy said, his voice softening. He let go of Ed with one hand and used it to smooth up and down Edward's back. “Very good. You're doing really well, Edward. Let's try again.”  
  


“...Yes, sir,” Ed whispered softly, his eyes going distant, seeing something in the middle ground that neither Al nor Roy could see. The two looked at each other, then Al looked away and lifted another spoonful up to Ed's face. Slowly but surely they got Edward properly fed. By the end of it, thankfully, Roy was no longer having to hold him like a vice, and had quietened his voice into something much gentler. He had wrapped his arm around Ed and was keeping him enveloped in a tight hug.  
  


“Alright,” Roy said, as the bowl became empty. He heaved a slow, deep breath, and Al could see the faint tremor pass through his hands as he moved. He reached out and took the bowl-- Al held fast at first, making eye contact with him for several seconds. Regret and grief flickered in Roy's dark eyes, and finally Al let go. Careful not to jostle Edward, Roy got to his feet and headed towards the kitchen. Alphonse watched after him for a spell, then gently slid into the spot he had left behind.  
  


Ed sat stock still in his position. Al got himself comfortable, snuggling down against his brother's side. He wrapped both arms tightly around Ed and his blanket and pulled him against his chest, keeping a tight hug on him. Ed was stock still for several long minutes before eventually relaxing. Al held his breath and listened to the pounding of his own heart in his ears. His hand throbbed in time with each beat.  
  


After a few more moments of silence, Ed's shoulders began to shake, and he was crying softly.  
  


“ Sorry,” he said, voice still raspy, soft underneath the tears, “...Sorry.”  
  


_ “ _ It's alright, Brother,” Al promised, holding Ed close and rocking gently, “You don't have anything to apologize for. It's alright.”  
  


Ed was shaking his head, but he didn't speak again, not even as Roy came back into the living room with a towel and mopped up the spilled broth. The man glanced over at Al, who just shook his head. It was probably better just to let Ed cry it out and hold him for the time being. Roy disappeared back into the kitchen and Al heard the sink running for a little bit. There was the sound of plates moving around, and then silverware, and then plates again. Al realized that Roy was stalling, was finding things to do to keep his mind busy instead of dwelling on what had just transpired.  
  


Waiting until Ed's cries had petered out and he had mostly calmed down, Al made sure his blanket was wrapped tightly around Ed before easing him back onto the cushions. Ed made a small, querying noise, turning red-rimmed eyes up to Al.  
  


“I'll be right back,” Alphonse promised, tucking the corner of the blanket into the couch cushion to keep it from falling back. “Don't worry Brother, it's going to be alright.”  
  


With that, he stood up and walked back into the kitchen. Roy was reorganizing his cutlery apparently, staring into the drawer with an unsteady expression on his face.  
  


“I'm sorry,” he said, the moment Al came to a stand next to the kitchen table. Al laid a cautious hand on the dining chair and stared at Roy's bent back.  
  


“Brother said the same thing,” he said, and that was enough to make Roy look up sharply, a bright look edging into his expression before it dropped again. He looked back at the drawer.  
  


“He has no--”  
  


“--nothing to apologize for, I told him,” Al took a deep breath, clearing out some of the acid-like anger in his chest. “And neither do you.”  
  


Roy stopped halfway through switching the spoons and the forks, then continued after a brief pause. His frown turned deeper, the line between his brows becoming more noticeable.  
  


“I very well may have things to apologize for,” he finally said, finishing up with his self-imposed task and shutting the silverware drawer. It rattled harshly in the quiet of the kitchen. Roy's hand stayed on the handle, white knuckled with the force of his grip. “If I had thought to send someone with him--”  
  


“--Then they would be dead, and Brother would still be in the same position he is now,” Alphonse interrupted smoothly. He sensed that this had been weighing on Roy, that the older man hadn't said anything but the crushing bite of guilt was just as painful as the teeth marks on his hand. “And you couldn't have helped sending Brother up there either. None of this is your fault.”  
  


That hurt as much to say out loud as it did for Roy to hear it. Something small still burned in Al-- that Ed  _ should not  _ have been sent up north alone, that Roy did hold some blame because there was no body else  _ to _ blame. Anybody he could actually direct his anger at was long gone, slipped back across the mountain range between Amestris and Drachma. Even Focke was back in North City, being dealt with as they saw fit.  
  


It was illogical rage-- it was sour,  _ bitter _ beyond belief, like rot slowly spreading inside him.  
  


In the end though, he had to hold open his hands and let the feeling go. At this point, he trusted Roy to have Ed's well being in mind. The quip in the hospital about Roy using Ed's tragedies, while not entirely undeserved, had been said in a moment of frustration and rage and helplessness because he, like Ed, had nobody to sink his teeth into except the people around him.  
  


It was, ultimately, the military that sat behind Roy that Al didn't trust. They would be the ones to brush all the suffering under the rug.  
  


“And what happened in there is not your fault either.”  
  


Roy flinched away from the words, like not being blamed was something that could burn him as quickly as fire. After a moment, he squared his shoulders and straightened back up. He carefully realigned the buttons down his shirt before turning around to look at Al, and it was like all the grief and pain had been wiped away, buried again under a layer of coolness, to be pulled out and re-examined later, when there was more distance.  
  


“I have to be in the office soon,” he said, saying nothing to Al's words. Al tried not to feel like he'd been walled, but it was pretty obvious to anybody with half a brain that he was being shut out, and not even a crowbar could wrench something out of Roy if he intended to keep it hidden. The only thing he could hope in this case was that Roy eventually opened up about what had happened in the living room, particularly if it was something that they might need to do again.  
  


Play acting as Ed's torturers didn't sit well with Al  _ at all _ , but until he was able to talk to the therapist about the best way to get him to eat, it might be the only method they had.  
  


“ Alright,” Alphonse agreed, “...I'm going to call the doctors that Dr. Franz recommended for Brother today. If Brother is asleep long enough and doesn't need watching, I can take care of dinner.”  
  


Roy nodded, picking up his uniform top and putting it on, one arm at a time. The decorative golden cording hung loose for a moment before he properly secured it and buttoned up his top. He tugged his sleeves to ensure the cuffs were straight, then picked up his jacket and swung it on. Al heard his car keys jingling in his pocket and then Roy looked up at him finally.  
  


“ ...I need to gather some of my take-home work,” he said wryly, as if the following conversation hadn't just happened. “...Call me and let me know if dinner is doable. If it's too much of a hassle, I can stop and get us something to eat.”  
  


“I can do that,” Alphonse promised, picking up the slightly wrinkled packet of papers that Dr. Franz had given him. He began to flick through the pages to get to the first listed doctors. Roy watched him for a moment with an unreadable expression.  
  


“If you need help with anything, don't hesitate the call the office,” he said, and Al looked up from the packet to raise his eyebrows. “It doesn't matter how small. I can send literally anybody down to help you, or come myself if need be.”  
  


Al smiled again, albeit weakly. The dark bruises stood out starkly on his hand, and the deep shadows under his eyes were more prominent than ever. Roy felt a quick pang on top of the burrowing, raw guilt that was eating holes through him, but he forced himself to put it aside as he went back up to his office and gathered up his paperwork, taking care not to leave anything laying around. He had been bringing home work from the case, but now he would have to be careful not to let Alphonse see anything he didn't want him to.  
  


Finally, this done, Roy came back downstairs from his office and, with a moment's indecision, headed over to the lump laying on the couch. Alphonse had burritoed Ed in his blanket and Ed had gone to sleep, clearly exhausted by the amount of physical strain he'd put on himself. His messy, uneven bangs hung around his face, blonde lashes pressed to flushed cheeks that were sticky with tears. His mouth moved ever so slightly, as if he were talking to someone in a dream.

  
Roy hoped it was a good dream, or at least one that Ed couldn't remember upon waking up. Checking himself to make sure he had all his work again, he went over to the kitchen door. Al was already on the phone, talking to the nutritionist listed in the packet. Roy held up a hand in a 'bye' gesture and mouthed “he's sleeping” to Al, who nodded and smiled at Roy in response. The smile didn't quite reach his eyes, but Roy left it at that all the same as he crossed back through the house and went to the door--  
  


\--and promptly tripped over the long box resting sideways in front the door. Barely holding in a shouted swear, Roy picked up the box and squinted at it, scowling until he read the addresses. “Alphonse Elric,” was listed above the house address, and the sender was “Winry Rockbell”, from Rush Valley.  
  


It was approximately the length of a leg, Roy supposed, looking at the box more carefully now. It didn't feel anywhere near heavy enough to be automail though, so it was probably a prosthetic, something easy for Ed to wear that wouldn't cause strain on his body. It wasn't necessarily a good time to start with physical therapy just yet, not when Ed's ribs were still countable and he flinched from every helping hand, but it was good to have on hand for when Ed was ready for it.  
  


Roy carried the box back to the kitchen, careful to be quiet as he passed by the sleeping Edward, and set the box inside the door. Al, still in mid-conversation, looked over at the box with raised eyebrows, but Roy was already on the way out. He had been granted permission by Riza to be late today, but there was a point where his lateness would push what was proper, and he would have to stay late to work.  
  


And as much as Roy was trying to get through the evidence as fast and thoroughly as possible, the idea of staying alone in the office at night, listening to recordings that made his skin crawl, was not an idea he liked to think about. No, better to slink home at the end of the day with everyone else, hurting and aching from the day's work and badly in need of a drink. Better to have people to commiserate with than sitting in the silence of the office by himself.  
  


_ Staring down at Ed, his boots pressed close to him, like any wrong move by the curled figure at his feet would garner a kick, like he could put his boot down on Ed's head and slam him to the ground and  _ control _ him--  
  
_

“ _ This is your food. You're going to eat it like you're told.”  
  
_

Roy got out to his car, climbed in, and slammed the door shut, as if he could lock out the memory of what had happened in the living room. He rested his elbows on his steering wheel and placed his head in his hands. His body felt numb, his feet nearly ached in his boots, and he wanted little more than to take them off.  
  


How often, in the last year, had there been boots by Ed's face as he ate off the floor like a dog? And now Roy's were among them, Roy's voice among the cold, sharp orders that would leave him swamped in fear and waiting for the next blow to land?  
  


Logic tried to whisper past these thoughts-- he'd been trying to get Edward to eat. If Edward didn't eat, he would die. There was no doubt about the fact missed meals were going to Ed's worse enemy from this point onwards.  
  


There had to be a better way to go about it, Roy resolved as he leaned back in his seat. He couldn't do that again, not to Edward or to himself. He'd rather prise Edward's jaws open and force food down his throat, than stand over him and play act as a torturer.  
  


He looked out his car window. The house sat innocently enough underneath its bower of trees. The sky through the dead limbs was still gray and foreboding, the storm from yesterday still lingering. Threading his fingers through his dark hair one last time to smooth it all back down, Roy put the key in the ignition and cranked the car engine, and carefully backed away from the house.  
  


The drive to work was mostly uneventful-- an overturned horse cart on his usual route made him have to switch roads-- and the sky managed to hold out on opening up until he was safely within the confines of Central Command. Rain pounding the walls and windows as he walked by, Roy nodded to the saluting soldiers that he passed, lost in thought until he got to the office.  
  


Riza looked up from her piles of paperwork that she was going through. Falman's, Havoc's, and Fuery's desks were all conspicuously empty, Roy noted as he came in and hung up his coat.  
  


“Sir,” she said pleasantly, “Lieutenant Havoc took a sick day. Warrant Officer Falman is taking a nap in the closet while we work through the backlog of translated material.”  
  


“...Acceptable, Captain,” Roy replied idly, glancing towards the supply closet. The door was slightly cracked, revealing one socked foot on the ground. Breda glanced over and saw, then reached out and quietly shut the door to keep Falman safe from prying eyes. “Anything new to report?”  
  


“Sergeant Fuery was able to secure both a camera and one of the interrogation rooms so that the movie reels we found can be observed,” she continued, sherry brown eyes watching Roy carefully. In turn, Roy tried not to let the sinking feeling show on his face. “He is down there now, setting everything up.”  
  


“Make sure he doesn't watch those on his own,” Roy replied quickly. “Vato needs to be there as a translator and myself as a witness.”  
  


“I think it might be wise for all of us to see,” Riza said, “If anything is said or done in the video that can connect to something we've been over before, it's all for the better, sir.”  
  


Roy considered this. He hadn't really wanted for everyone to watch, to be an audience in a theater of a horror movie where the costumes weren't fake and the horror was real and monsters actually existed wearing the skins of humans. What she said made sense though, even if he didn't like it.  
  


“Of course,” he said, then set his finished paperwork on the nearest desk. “Is there anything else?”  
  


“...How are Edward and Alphonse settling in, sir?”  
  


Roy smiled a bit then, at her, and at Breda who looked like he was trying not to be interested in anything but his translated documents. He was looking over the top of his paperwork though, watching Roy with barely concealed curiosity.  
  


“They're settled in well enough, considering the house is barely unpacked and we're all living out of boxes,” he said, then-- “Alphonse is mostly tired from all the moving around and living in the hospital. Edward was grouchy when we picked him up but--”  
  


_ \--Ed crouched on the ground, huddled in a frightened ball over his upturned broth meal, Roy's boots pressed close to him--  
  
_

“--He's spoken, a little,” Roy continued after swallowing thickly and banishing the unwanted image from his brain. Riza raised her eyebrows. “He's said 'yes sir' and 'no sir' and-- and 'I'm sorry.'”  
  


“ _ Sorry _ ?” Breda blurted out, and Roy and Riza turned to look at him. He fell back in his chair and swiped a hand through his red hair. “...What's he of all people got to be sorry about?”  
  


Roy couldn't make himself bring up the incident with the food, not exactly true to detail. He couldn't incriminate himself like that out loud.  
  


“He was frightened and bit Alphonse on the hand,” he said instead, smoothing out the details into something palatable. And private. Some things were nobody's business and entirely his to take to the bar and drink away as best he could. “Alphonse reassured him that he'd done nothing wrong however. When I left he had gone to sleep on the couch, so I suppose he's settling in well outside of the hospital.”  
  


There was quiet as the two of them took this in. After a minute, Riza shook her head.  
  


“If you'd told me a year and a half ago that Edward had bit someone, I would have suggested they go and get a rabies shot,” she said lightly, grimacing. Roy snorted nonetheless. Spell broken, tucking the memory of a crouching Edward into the back of his mind to be re-examined later, Roy headed back to his office, trusting that Riza would fetch him as soon as Fuery was ready with the camera.  
  


Translated paperwork was already sitting at his desk, Falman's perfect, sharp handwriting staring up at him. Everything was turned and overlapping, plastered with different colors of sticky-notes and marked with the rainbow of highlighters to keep everything carefully organized according to Falman's internal rhythm. It had been a haphazard nightmare to traverse at first, but Roy had acclimated to his subordinate's process and knew where to start. He tugged the first in the stack over to himself and opened it.  
  


From then on, the day passed with little event. Fuery stayed busy with the projector-- a call up informed Roy that whoever had delivered it had ignored the “fragile” warning on the box, and Fuery was now taking it apart and putting it back together again to ensure that it didn't inadvertently destroy the film reels once started. Falman reappeared at some point around lunch, looking very much a disheveled mess. With four more translated files under his arm and piles more left untouched so far, however, Roy couldn't afford to send him home. He took the new files, thanked his exhausted Warrant Officer, and dismissed him back to work. With the weight of work, with underlining names and connecting dots and  _ searching _ , searching for mention of Muric Banner, for where Kendrick Minsk was at. Making lists and lists and comparing them to the lists compiled from other files, lining up commonalities.  
  


Here--  
  


\-- a soldier's name was mentioned in a report on possible theft of medical supplies-- another criminal, another person to watch for.  
  


An orderly's name, scrawled carelessly in a memo about Subject 11. Another criminal, escaped away to Drachma. Another dead alchemist.  
  


Roy worked until the sun was nearly set, and the events of that morning buried away under the work. He worked until Riza came in to the office with the news that Fuery had gotten the projector working.  
  


“ We may have the time to take in one reel,” Roy said after a few moments of consideration, glancing at the clock, “I'm not working anybody-- particularly Vato-- any extra hours if it can be helped.”  
  


That settled it, and with the heavy sense of dread dogging their every step, Roy and his men tidied up the office and moved down to the interrogation room that Fuery had appropriated for their use. Falman brought a large stack of papers for note-taking, and Breda was still holding on to a translated supply report he was only halfway done with, clearly intending to finish going through it during the reel.  
  


The interrogation room was small and cramped, made even more so by the film projector and the box of tools that Fuery had brought down. The observation window was covered with a blank sheet meant to serve as a screen. Several chairs had been brought in, and now Fuery was messing with a phonograph and several of the recording cylinders.  
  


“ Some of the numbers marked on the reels matched up to the cylinders,” he explained after a moment, “I think they might be sound coupled to the film, but we'll have to see.”  
  


“ Very well,” Roy said firmly, setting his own note-taking material on the table between the chairs. “We're going to watch this one reel, take the notes we can, discuss anything valuable, and then we're going home. Vato, you're taking no more than three reports home with you tonight because you look like something that crawled out of a sewer and you're starting to smell like the mothballs in the supply closet.”  
  


“I appreciate that, sir,” Falman deadpanned flatly back. Nevertheless, there were murmured noises of assent, everybody too tired to bother with snappy 'yessirs'. Roy did not hold it against them as they took their seats. Fuery cut the lights and went over to stand between the phonograph and the projector.  
  


“The cylinder and the reel were both marked as Subject 01, dated March 13 th , 1914, with the ID number 356B,” he said, putting one hand on each machine as everyone marked this information down on their papers. “Alright, here goes--”  
  


He flipped both machines on and took a seat. The projector turned on with a click, the light flooding the room and casting wild shadows everywhere. The white screen filled with gray fuzz first, the soft hush of the film rolling through the mechanics filling the room. The phonograph squeaked several times before crackling sound began to burst from it's trumpet-like speaker.  
  


The gray, fuzzy screen turned white again, then dark, and then the image of a man in a straitjacket appeared on the screen. His head was bent, and he was seated in a wheelchair with tight straps pulled across his body. The background was a stark, blank darkness, no shadows or details could be seen.  
  


“Who was Subject 01 again?” Breda murmured as he wrote in his report.  
  


“ Mathieu Leblanc,” Riza replied back, her voice carefully neutral, “No body, but the records indicate he is deceased.”  
  


Silence again, filled with the crackling of white noise and the harsh panting sounds of Mathieu Leblanc breathing through an obviously broken nose. Blood was pouring down his face as he spoke, voice broken and reedy over the recording.  
  


“ I don't know what you want—”  
  


A swift fist to the face was what he earned for his trouble. Drachman voices, murmuring in the background, then a harsh voice in stilted Amestrian burst through the speaker.  
  


“ We do not like to repeat ourselves, State Alchemist,” the voice said, standing just far back enough from the camera that he sounded like he was speaking through a layer of sheet metal. “You will admit to trespassing on Drachman territory and committing treason against your country. You will assent to being transported to the Drachman capital, and express your desire to participate in building our alchemy program.”  
  


“ These don't sound like the interviews I've been listening to, but that voice is familiar,” Falman muttered, hunched over his paper as he transcribed what was written. “They didn't do a lot of the actual beatings on the later recordings.”  
  


“They escalated to electrical torture,” Breda muttered back, chewing on his pen cap. “And got more thorough and methodical about the questioning. I don't think they were doing full out beatings like this on camera by the time they got to Ed.”  
  


“Some of the reels were marked 'surgery' too,” Fuery mumbled, and everyone went quiet at this. That was not something they were looking forward to  _ at all,  _ but if it would reveal the faces of the surgeons that had participated in this, then they would do it.  
  


“ Why don't you go fuck yourself,” Leblanc said after several minutes of breathing, “I haven't done any damn trespassing, and you can tell that that fucker M--”  
  


He was punched again, before he could finish his sentence, and the man spat out a spray of blood, a thick black color on the grainy screen. He winced as he rolled his jaw but stayed quiet all the same. Roy watched him intently, trying to look into his half-lidded, tired eyes. What all he had been through at this point? Had he known what was going to happen to him? Was the inevitable staring him in the face even at this moment; the fact that he was destined to be a corpse, splayed out and pinned open to be examined before eventually being burned inside an oven? Did he know that there wouldn't even be dust left of him to return to his family?  
  


How long was he left bound in a straitjacket, locked up in a windowless cell with nobody to talk to, before he knew that he was going to die in that facility?  
  


How long did it take Edward to finally break to the idea of death?  
  


He had to have hit it at some point, there was no getting around it.  
  


When had he accepted that he was not going to be rescued? Had it been a month? Six months? Had it been in those last hours where he was awake and aware inside the morgue cooler? Had bitter disappointment been the last thing on his mind as consciousness had slipped away from him?  
  


The interrogators were speaking again, and Roy tore his thoughts away from Edward away from--  _ curled up tight, whimpering and crying at Roy's feet like that was where he belonged-- _ and back to the film.  
  


The rest of the film and the recording passed in much the same way as the beginning had started out. By the time the beatings were done, Leblanc was barely holding his head up, lips hanging open as spit and blood poured down the front of his straitjacket. He was breathing hard and mumbling. His words were barely discernable through the crackling and tearing of the recording, but Roy could distinctly hear curses and denials being said under the spitting up of blood.  
  


It was no wonder they had turned to electricity, Roy thought rather morbidly. Blood got messy awfully quick.  
  


Eventually, the interrogation ended. Two guards appeared in frame-- Roy quickly memorized their faces as he saw them, connecting them to their respective ranks so boldly displayed on their shoulders. They weren't high ranks-- just the usual soldiers that got an order and did it, but if they reappeared in Amestris, they could be caught. Roy made a quick note to have a photographer or an artist come in to copy their faces for the records. Pushing Leblanc back in his seat, they wheeled him off the screen and the reel ended with a soft  _ snap _ . When the projector light cut off, leaving them in blackness, Fuery got to his feet and went to cut the interrogation room lights back on.  
  


They were silent for several long minutes. Roy waited for the sound of the recording cylinder to grind down to a slow stop before he spoke.  
  


“ Alright,” he said quietly, “Anything?”  
  


“They didn't really know what they were going after at first,” Riza said almost immediately, “They're clumsy and the questions are directionless. This venture was born small and grew here in Amestris, so it likely didn't have immediate or widespread support from Drachman superiors, at least not until they started making a dent in the alchemist population.”  
  


“ And when they started sending laboratory samples across the border to be tested for alchemical properties. It fits with the idea of a former State Alchemist helping them along,” Roy replied as he wrote. “Leblanc almost said a name. He didn't get it out, but it was on his lips.”  
  


“ That was the only video reel labeled 'Subject 01',” Fuery said, “Unless there's other recordings of him in the evidence boxes, I don't think we're going to find out what he said.”  
  


Silence again. Breda pulled his pen cap out of his mouth.  
  


“Two of the earliest reports I've read so far mention a 'Private Sokolov'. Both of them were about handling the prisoners and they were both in passing reference,” Breda grunted, “One of the guards in the film was a Private. The other was their equivalent to Sergeant. Sokolov might be the one in the film.”  
  


“Private is a very common rank, and 'Sokolov' might as well be a John Smith,” Falman said, shaking his head, “It's a common Drachman name. Without someone directly referring to him by name in the film, it would be hard to pinpoint it.”  
  


“ We'll make a note of it,” Roy said, “Any name we've managed to pull out so far should be listed with the context in which they were used and any extra details associated with them to see if we can pinpoint who exactly they are. Common soldiers are the least priority though-- if we can get any of the higher ranked people behind this, or anybody doing the actual act of torture, so much the better.”  
  


“I'll do that,” Breda said, picking through the report he'd brought with him, “I'll have the list of names done up before we watch the next film. How many of these are we going to push through a day? There were quite a few reels.”  
  


“ No more than one or two every few days,” Roy said firmly, “These are going to get worse as we go along and I don't want to risk any of us burning ourselves out stressing over them. It also give us enough time between each film to compile more and more data, because at this rate we'll have to go back and do re-watches as more information and evidence comes in.”  
  


“...Are there any in there with Edward's number?” Riza asked after a moment. Fuery pursed his lips and adjusted his glasses as he finished writing his sentence.  
  


“ Two,” he said simply, “One's marked as a 'surgery'.”  
  


Falman leaned back in his seat. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. His uniform was rumpled; a small scuff on his pins revealed how dangerously overworked the typically polished, straight laced older man was.

  
“I don't want to watch those.”  
  


“ None of us do,” Riza said, and indeed her impassive, cool face had taken on a green, sickly tint at the thought of it.  
  


“ We're going to, though.”  
  


Silence again. Roy tapped his pen on the table.  
  


“ We're going to,” he confirmed quietly, then straightened up his papers. “If there's anything else that bears mentioning?”

  
There wasn't. Everyone quietly shuffled their things together and prepared to leave. Fuery went about dismantling the reel and projector and they locked up the interrogation room for the night. They all said their 'goodnights', and with a firm warning to Falman to take a shower and get at least six hours of shut-eye, they each went their separate ways.  
  


Well, most of them. Breda stuck close to Roy long after Riza, Falman, and Fuery had disappeared down the hall. Roy raised his eyebrow at him and he huffed, passing a hand through his red hair for what seemed the millionth time that day, judging by it's overall messiness.  
  


“ You think Alphonse and the boss are up for a visitor?” he asked gruffly, “Haven't seen them since North City, and all.”  
  


Roy paused in the middle of putting his coat on.  
  


“ I meant to call Alphonse, actually,” he said after a moment, “Well-- he was meant to call me, but we haven't been in the office. I can ask him if things have been calm enough to consider a visitor.”  
  


The two trekked to the office, where Roy placed his call with Breda hanging out around the stacks of paperwork. The man sifted idly through a few of the translated reports that still needed going through, but didn't seem inclined to open one and start working.  
  


“ _ Hello? I mean-- Mustang residence, Alphonse Elric speaking?” _

  
“Hello, Alphonse,” Roy said smoothly, “I apologize for the lateness of the call. I understand if you've already gotten dinner taken care of.”  
  


“ _ Oh, General-- _ ” a pause, “-- _ Yes, I made something. There's a plate for you too, so you don't have to pick anything up. Is everything alright at work? _ ”  
  


“Quite,” Roy said, waving a hand as if to whisk away the image of Leblanc's bleeding face from his mind. “In fact, Heymans was wondering if it was alright to come over and say hello.”  
  


“ _ Hm. I don't see why not, but Brother might be asleep. He's been up and down most of the day. Not surprising, but he probably won't be the best host won't right now. There should be enough leftover for him to eat something too. _ ”  
  


“ I don't think that will be a problem,” Roy replied idly, “Did you get everything settled with the doctors?”

  
“ _ Yes, _ ” Alphonse's voice turned a little more chipper, “ _ More of them than I thought are willing to make house calls. Of course, there's the dentist and the eye-doctor that need special equipment, but I think those can wait for a little bit. The nutritionist should be out here tomorrow to evaluate Brother's body condition and help me set up a more concrete food plan for him. We also have an appointment to have Brother's arm examined. Another doctor will be out in the next few days to check his ears for us, and he advised just to keep applying the medication as prescribed until then.”  
  
_

“ Did you have any trouble with his second dosages today?”  
  


“ _ It was better than the first time,” _ Al said, his voice turning quiet for a moment as he presumably checked in on whatever Ed was doing. Apparently satisfied, his voice returned to normal volume.  _ “He likes having everything listed out and explained in detail before taking it. It's time consuming but if it helps him get the medicine down without a fuss, so much the better. The ear medicine is still a struggle-- he just doesn't like having his ears touched at all.”  
  
_

“ Understandable, considering,” Roy said. “And the psychiatrist?”  
  


“ _ Dr. Carter? Yes, she seemed really happy to get my call. She said to let Brother settle in some more for the rest of the week so that he's more comfortable in his surroundings, and we've made an appointment for her to come introduce herself after that. She doesn't want to rush things and frighten Brother.”  
  
_

“ As I thought,” Roy said, straightening up, “Very well, Heymans and I will be there shortly. Take care.”  
  


“ _ You too. _ ”  
  


They hung up, and Roy turned to look at Breda, who had been poking through another report. Hearing the phone click in its bakelite receiver, Breda shut the report and looked up at him.  
  


“ Ready?”  
  


“As I'll ever be,” he grunted. Despite this, he looked exceedingly pleased. “...Anything I need to know going in?”  
  


“ Be quiet,” Roy replied as they locked the office up tight and left, “Be slow. Be gentle. Don't touch bare skin if you can help it. He seems to appreciate contact and being embraced but it has to be done through his blanket or he panics. He might also be asleep when we get there, because just moving around is a giant energy expenditure for someone in his condition.”  
  


“ Right,” Breda said, squaring his shoulders tightly. He looked a little nervous. Roy sighed deeply and clapped him on the shoulder, and the two men left in silence. Roy drove, earning himself more than one anxious look as he drove down rain-slicked streets and nearly missed two turns. Finally, they turned into the driveway of Roy's new house. The windows were all lit up in the dark, a warm beacon in the chilly night. Roy carefully walked up the ramp that they had all managed to put in shortly before the Elrics arrival, hanging on to the railing and reminding himself to put in some grip tape on the wood to keep feet from sliding in wet conditions.  
  


Roy opened the door quietly, half expecting to see Edward asleep on the couch as if no time had passed. Instead, however, Edward was curled up on the floor again, his blanket wrapped tightly around him. There were several more pillows and blankets all around him, as though Al had spent most of his day laying on the floor with his brother. Ed was laying partially on his side, blanket tucked up to his shoulder and head propped up by several pillows. A book was nestled carefully into the space beside him, angled appropriately that he could read and use his casted arm to turn the pages. He didn't look up at Roy as he entered.  
  


Alphonse came out of the kitchen a moment later, smiling when he saw Breda.  
  


“ Hey Lieutenant Breda,” he said brightly, “I just put the leftover casserole in the microwave so those will be done in a few minutes.”  
  


“ Don't have to feed me but I'll take it,” Breda said, grinning at him, then looking back down at Ed. “What are we reading down here?”  
  


Ed didn't respond, predictably enough. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he looked through the book, as if he were about to drop off to sleep once more.  
  


“ Why don't you lay down with Brother and help him turn the pages?” Alphonse suggested, “I'm glad you came to say hi. Brother could really use the extra interaction. General, I've been putting away everything in the kitchen if you want to take a look and make sure it's all arranged right--?”  
  


“--I'm sure it's fine, Alphonse,” Roy said, though he set his briefcase down and followed Al into the kitchen anyway. Their voices became quiet as they disappeared through the doorway. Breda was left standing awkwardly over Edward, who continued to read his book without looking up at him.  
  


“ Hey, boss,” Breda finally said quietly, taking off his jacket and, seeing that there wasn't a coat rack, set it on the nearby coffee table. After a moment's thought, he climbed down on his hands and knees and took his boots off, then slowly-- like Roy had advised him-- settled onto the blanket laying on the ground next to him. Ed reacted for the first time, shifting and turning under his own blanket to let Breda lay close enough to see the book as well.  
  


Breda read the first few lines and snorted.  
  


“ Alchemy, alchemy, alchemy,” he said, though he propped himself up on his elbow so he could continue to read along anyways. “Always studying, aren't you?”  
  


Daring, he reached out and brushed some of Ed's messy blonde hair away from his face, disguising the motion by taking hold of the blanket and tucking it closer to Ed. Ed didn't react thankfully, possibly too tired to try and resist or struggle. Breda nestled his chin in one hand and began to read the words on the page. He murmured the words softly, not entirely sure as to their meaning seeing as how alchemists had a knack for fancy sayings for simple things and vice versa, not really just being straight forward with their meaning. Alphonse came in a little while later with a plate of food that Breda, not getting off the floor, ate distractedly as he and Ed pored through the book.  
  


It almost seemed like Ed was on autopilot, like he was going through the motions but wasn't really there. What reassured Breda, however, that Ed was aware and paying attention was that he was very clearly reading faster than Breda was narrating out loud. His eyes would stop following the lines, his fingers would curl around the edge of the page, as if to turn it-- but he would wait. He waited for Breda to finish speaking the last word on the page before turning the new one, and even if he wasn't exactly talking, Breda was somewhat satisfied with this small sign of Ed acknowledging his presence.  
  


Eventually though, Ed's head nestled further and further into his pillow, until his eyes eventually shut. Breda read out loud for several more pages regardless, just in case, before finally tucking the ribbon bookmark into place and shutting the book. Alphonse was standing over him a moment later, holding out a hand to help him up off the floor.  
  


“ I'm really glad you did come,” Alphonse reiterated in a soft, quiet voice as Breda put his boots back on, “I know he's not in the best shape. I know he isn't the  _ same _ . But he needs people like this. He needs the people that were in his life before all this happened.”  
  


“ ...I'm glad I came,” Breda managed, gathering up his coat. Roy was standing at the door, watching him with an unreadable, but easy expression. His dark eyes trailed back over to the sleeping Edward for several moments before looking back at him.  
  


“ I can drive you home,” Roy offered but Breda shrugged.  
  


“ I'm not too far off,” he said, “It's an easy walk back to the apartment building.”  
  


He said his goodbyes to Alphonse, and Roy walked him down to the end of the driveway. It was still chilly outside, but thankfully it seemed to have ceased raining for the time being.  
  


“ He  _ is _ doing better, isn't he?” Breda asked finally, when they got to the sidewalk, “I mean. Obviously he isn't going to be the same as he always was come tomorrow morning, but he's better than what he was like in North City.”  
  


Roy was quiet, something dark and flat passing through his expression. He seemed to wrestle with it for several moments, but whatever it was was apparently too painful or upsetting to talk about, because it was gone again as quickly as it appeared.  
  


“ Some things are doing better,” he said, in half-agreement. “...We'll just have to take it one day at a time.”  
  


That was... vague. Breda didn't like it, but Roy didn't look like he wanted to be pressed about it. When he had come into the office earlier that day, he had looked like hell in spite of his reassuring news that the brothers were settling in. He cleaned up well enough, was good at tucking things away when he didn't feel like examining them too closely, but the shadow of whatever he was thinking about still hung over him like a dark cloud.  
  


“ Yeah,” Breda replied, not wanting to push since his commanding officer clearly didn't want to talk about it. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets and took a step forward, “I'll see you tomorrow, then?”  
  


“ Of course, Lieutenant,” Roy said, “Good night.”  
  


Roy went back up the drive, and Breda continued his way down the street. He hadn't been lying when he said his apartment building wasn't particularly far away, but when it came time to take the turn that would lead him there, he kept walking on by as if he didn't see it. Instead, he continued on across a bridge and wandered his way to another apartment complex entirely. There weren't very many people out and about, but Breda could hear the thumping music of a dance hall down the street, and the occasional pair of headlights passed by as people made their way home from work.  
  
Mounting the steps to Havoc's floor, he knocked several times. There was no answer.  
  


Hm.  
  


Breda stood on the walkway for several minutes, debating, waiting to see if Havoc would wake up and answer him. As he stood there though, a light from downstairs caught his eye and he looked-- the apartment's laundromat door was partially open. On a hunch, Breda slowly made his way back down the stairwell.  
  


He hesitated at the door-- he didn't want to look like a creep, in case it was just some late-night worker down to wash her clothes. Just one look--  
  


\--he stuck his head in the door. Sure enough, his hunch had proven correct. Havoc sat awkwardly in one of the plastic chairs, eyes closed and head hung low as he napped. The dryer nearby was still going, and the cigarette that he'd lit up before falling asleep still burned, smoke curling up over his head.  
  


Breda reached out and tugged the cigarette from his friend's mouth. Havoc woke with a sudden start, blinking blearily up at Breda.  
  


“ Heymans?” he rasped, the coughed, cleared his throat. “What're you doing here? Give that back--”  
  


“ You should be thanking me,” Breda said, handing back the cigarette and settling down in the chair next to Havoc, “Falling asleep with a cig in your mouth like that. You coulda burned the whole place down.”  
  


“ I know what I'm doing,” Havoc grunted, taking a long drag off said cigarette before flicking away the built up ash. “And I'm not thanking you because you didn't answer me.”  
  


“ I was walking back from visiting Ed and Al,” Breda replied, falling back in his seat. Havoc went quiet, blue eyes staring off into a middle distance that Breda couldn't see. “...He's doing better than when I saw him last.”  
  


“ Yeah,” Havoc said noncommittally. He blew out a puff of smoke. Breda looked over at him.  
  


“ We thought we were gonna have to gear up to pry you out the door with a crowbar this morning,” he started, and Havoc twitched slightly, “But you called in. Are you the only one on the team with a healthy habit of self-care, or did something happen?”  
  


Havoc stayed quiet, rolling his lighter around in his hand for several minutes.  
  


“ We left so quick I forgot to take out the garbage before we headed up North,” he grunted, shaking his head. “My whole fucking apartment smells like half-rotted porkchop. I swear I looked into the garbage bag and I thought--”  
  


_ \--opening up the bag in the facility, hoping and feverishly praying that the Drachmans hadn't, that they wouldn't have dared to put Ed's body in a garbage bag like he was little more than leftover medical waste--  
  
_

“ Every time I look in my fucking garbage can I think I'm going to see him, all curled up and fucking emaciated and dead like those people in the cells we found,” Havoc said, “All my clothes smell like rotted meat. My blankets smell like it, my walls smell like it. And then I come down here and I open up the fucking dryer and I think for a second I'm looking in that morgue cooler again. I had to shove my old wheelchair into a closet cuz I couldn't get rid of this thought of Ed all strapped up in it and just--  _ decomposing _ . I keep seeing Ed like a fucking corpse and it won't goddamned stop.”  
  


Breda bit his lip.  
  


“ You need a place to stay? We can leave it off until the weekend and come over to scrub it down.”  
  


Havoc laughed a little, a hacking, bitter noise. He put his head into his hand.  
  


“ Yeah,” he managed, “Yeah, if you don't-- if you don't mind.  _ Fuck _ it's just-- it's all so messed up. I don't know why I'm being like this.”  
  


“ Just because you're not one of the people in the cell don't mean it doesn't hurt,” Breda said, the flickering scenes of the movie reel playing in his head as he spoke. “Shit like this spreads and hurts anybody it touches. Do you think you need to talk to someone?”  
  


“ Think I should?” Havoc asked, his voice a bit dull, “Scratch that. I probably should if I'm having nightmares of Ed falling all to pieces.”  
  


“ Yeah,” Breda managed, and paused when he heard the dry rumble to a stop. “Guess that'll be it.”  
  


Havoc nodded, but didn't look in any kind of hurry to go open the dryer. He looked out at it bleakly, as if it were something put there to personally hurt him. Breda clapped him on the shoulder.  
  


“ I'll get it,” he said firmly, and Havoc made a weak noise of protest, “Don't worry about it, Jean. Why don't you just chill out by the door and we can walk on back to my place? Fresh air and some exercise to clear out the shit.”  
  


Havoc looked like he might have argued, but after a moment, he caved in and did as Breda suggested, slouching slowly over to the door and stepping out. Breda picked up the laundry basket and went over to the dryer. It was innocuous enough, the white door stained somewhat yellow from age and years of sitting in a room where people habitually ignored the No Smoking sign on the wall.  
  


Breda popped open the door and took a hard breath. Instead of a body, there was nothing but the expected clothes, still hot from the cycling. He pulled them into the basket quickly, considered that maybe he might need to talk to a therapist too, then slammed the dryer door and met up with Havoc outside. The taller man hung halfway in the shadow of the door, the bright red of his cigarette glowing in the dark. The purple swathes under his eyes revealed just how little sleep he'd gotten on his 'day off'.  
  


He looked down at Breda, silent for a moment, then pulled his pack out of his pocket and tapped out another cigarette. He held it out, and Breda took it after less than a second's thought. Havoc snapped his lighter open and held the lit flame in a cupped hand, lighting it for him.  
  


Breda wasn't too big on smoking, but sometimes, there was just a  _ need.  
  
_

The two stood in the yellow light of the laundry room for a little while, not talking as they smoked. Eventually, with a brush of a hand to an elbow and murmured encouragement, Havoc and Breda moved on their way. Breda blew out a gust of smoke as they left behind the apartment building and it's small assortment of unintended horrors. They'd be back-- Havoc couldn't just never return to his apartment, but for now it felt better to stay together than separate, away from things like garbage bags brimming with rotted meat and dryers that turned to morgue coolers if one's eyes were tired enough.  
  


The two men wound their way down the street in silence, the night pressed in all around them.

  
  
  



End file.
